Impacts of Economic Inequality on Women’s Health (01:988:408)
Professor Christopher Nielsen
Domestic and global economic inequality place significant numbers of people at high risk for health crises even as they are denied access to care. This course investigates the “pathogenic” aspects of gender and economic inequality; how systems of unequal resource distribution contribute to wide disparities of health risk, access to healthcare, and clinical outcomes; and how global trade and transnational migration affect health costs, healthcare delivery systems, and the availability of healthcare professionals.
Health Consequences of Global Trade in Food (01:988:412)
| Professor Heidi Hoechst |
Close to one billion people suffer from malnutrition and many more from food deprivation in the twenty-first century. As neoliberal trade policies have restructured national economies, new speculation in global commodities markets has limited access to food by the poor. This course investigates shifting modes of food production as local practices of subsistence agriculture have been replaced by export agriculture and global commodities markets. Students will compare the consequences of these changes for women as consumers in the global North as well as for women as producers of subsistence in the global South. It also analyzes the health effects of the creation of consumer markets for processed foods.
Gendered Professions and the Care Economy (01:988:414)
| Professor Erin Evans |
Nursing lies at the heart of the “care economy.” Involving work that requires intensive physical labor, person-to-person communication, and spatial proximity, the intimate nature of care work resists mechanization. In contrast to the production of commodities, the highly personalized labor of care is driven by human need rather than profit maximization. In nursing, skill entails the effective exercise of professional judgment. Focused on the cultivation and preservation of human capacities, this professional labor resists routinization and automation. The course explores recent efforts to heighten the profit-making potential of the care economy, and it considers the long-term implications of efforts to deskill and outsource care work.