Genders, sexes and social inequalities in health will be explored during an upcoming Interdisciplinary Grand Rounds, hosted by the Program for Faculty Development.

Nancy Krieger, health and social behaviour associate professor and associate professor in the Harvard Center for Society and Health, will present the May Cohen Lecture in Women's Health.

It will take place Thursday, Sept. 11 from 4 to 6 p.m. in Rm. 4E20, Health Sciences Centre. A reception will follow in the Ewart Angus foyer.

The discussant will be Mita Giacomini, associate professor, Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McMaster.

Abstract:

Addressing women's health necessarily requires grappling with issues of gender, sex, and social inequalities in health. This presentation will review the conceptual debates leading to the distinction between “sex” and “gender” as biological and social constructs. Drawing upon ecosocial theory, a diverse set of examples will be presented in which gender relations and sex-linked biology are singly, neither, or both relevant as independent or synergistic determinants of the selected outcomes.

Some of the contemporary controversies concerning the measurement of social class, socioeconomic position, and their links to gender & racial/ethnic inequalities in health, will be discussed, as well as some of the complexities in understanding the population burden of breast cancer.

Krieger is a social epidemiologist, with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and the history of public health. She has 20 years of experience as an activist in issues involving social justice, science, and health. She is co-editor, with Glen Margo, of AIDS: The Politics of Survival (1994); and with Elizabeth Fee of Women's Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public Health (1994).