NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GENDER PSYCHOLOGY

DEAR COLLEAGUES

It is our immense pleasure to invite you to the National Conference on ‘Women, Health and Identity: Re-visioning a Multidisciplinary Perspective' which is being held at The IIS University, Jaipur, on 12-13 February, 2016.

The concepts of women’s health are embedded in aspects of lived experience from family to spirituality, from childhood to old age. In fact, concepts of health are an integral part of being a person. The way that one considers health, not only in terms of illness but also in terms of well-being, affects all areas of lived experiences.

Health is also a highly gendered concept with biological health and the reproductive cycle becoming a natural gender division. Within this division, it has been argued that women’s health has become objectified through patriarchal social constructions in health provision, science, economics, politics, society and culture. Gender determines the differential power and control men and women have over the socioeconomic determinants of their health and lives, their social position, status and treatment in society and their susceptibility and exposure to specific health risks.

Women’s health is often objectively structured around milestones in the reproductive cycle and also forms a continuous psychological sub-narrative. This contributes to the construction of the individual woman’s health identity. The person she has been, is now and will become is grounded in the status of health enjoyed by the woman.  Consequently, this influences not only her ability to act on the world but also her perceived position in society.

Research has shown that it is not just direct health experiences that contribute to the internalization of knowledge about illness and wellbeing. Other information such as social, economic and political representation of health, health relationships and vicariously represented health experiences also contribute to the construction of a health identity. In view of the fact that there are a number of issues related to women’s perception and experience of health and wellness, it is imperative to investigate women’s health and identity in the context of personal and social world and to assess if the dawning of new postmodern theoretical age is reflected in the praxis.

 This conference isbeing organized to generate ideas and strategies for engagement of academicians, researchers and health care professionals in debates concerning the ways in which women are oppressed within service environment and changes that must be made to institute more effective health services. Through this conference, we also hope to provide a vibrant platform for discussion and exchange of research findings on contemporarily relevant issue related to understanding of how gender influences identity and health, interaction between the two in society and its implications.  The objectives of the conference include:

• To investigate the personal, interpersonal and societal aspects of construction of a health  identity from the standpoint of women's subjective and social experiences

• To examine various facets of an evolving identity that moves away from the fixed stereotypical models of medical illness towards an axis of illness and wellbeing

• To explore further possibilities for construction of new models for  reframing of  women's health identity

• To consider the implication of these new models for those investigating, providing and delivering health care