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- Creators: School of Social Transformation
Description
When communist leader Ceaușescu was overthrown in the Romanian revolution of 1989, Romania reinstated reproductive freedoms that had been denied under communist policy. This study looks at reproductive health in Romania in 2013, examining the progress in reproductive healthcare made since 1989 while looking at lingering barriers to resources and education. Thirty-five pharmacists were surveyed to collect information on pricing and accessibility of contraceptives in pharmacies. In addition, interviews were conducted with the director of Societatea de Educatie Contraceptiva si Sexuala (SECS), a reproductive clinic healthcare provider, a professor of philosophy and feminism at Babeș-Bolyai University, and four young Romanian women.
ContributorsZack, Lauren (Author) / Katsulis, Yasmina (Thesis director) / Orlich, Ileana (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / College of Public Programs (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
This research explores the unique and complicated experiences of women living with Von Willebrand Disease (VWD). VWD occurs with quantitative or qualitative deficiencies in Von Willebrand Factor—a key protein involved in blood clotting. While VWD affects men and women, women often suffer harsher complications because of menstruation, childbirth, and other women’s health issues. Using online VWD support groups, this research recognizes and attempts to understand the common experiences of women with VWD. Availability of Care, Motherhood, Community and Sisterhood, Girlhood, Sexual Health and Reproductive Health, and Stigma were the six common themes found within these online support groups. Women in these groups corroborate the current understandings of women-specific experiences with VWD: particularly, heavy menstruation, postpartum hemorrhaging, diagnostic difficulties, treatment complications, and implications of an overall lower quality of life. However, these women also report VWD-induced complications with sexual health, mental health, care when trying to conceive, misinterpretations of bruising, constraints on healthcare availability, and the stigma associated with heavy menstruation. These findings address gaps in the literature and identify new areas for further research. Ideally, these conclusions will provide educational materials for healthcare professionals, government legislatures, and families to better support women and girls with VWD.
Keywords: Von Willebrand disease, women’s health, sexual health, mental health, reproductive health, phenomenology, and stigma
Keywords: Von Willebrand disease, women’s health, sexual health, mental health, reproductive health, phenomenology, and stigma
ContributorsReynolds, Aubrey Bryanna (Author) / Haskin, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Gemelli, Marcella (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The idea that population growth presents a major threat to global stability has existed ever since Thomas Malthus first theorized about the catastrophic implications of the Industrial Revolution in 1798. This oversimplified, alarmist narrative later dovetailed with Cold War anxieties about the teeming population of newly designated "third world" nations in the United States post-WWII, inspiring decades of international policy focused on restricting the fertility of women in the global South. Today, global family planning programs suggest that the distribution of contraceptives is an essential means to empowering women around the world, but a historical analysis of the coercive and eugenicist inclinations of the population and development field reveals that not much has changed outside of rhetorical fronts. By focusing only on fertility reduction as a direct route to slowing population growth and solving problems supposedly directly related to it, traditional policies fail to acknowledge the systemic inequalities that perpetuate social systems like poverty and gender inequity. Zero population growth narratives frame women in the global South as objectified reproductive bodies in need of external manipulation, and in doing so, embody a Western colonialist mentality of cultural and technological superiority. This thesis argues that while the scarcity of resources available for an exponentially growing global population is alarming, more attention should be paid to the driving forces behind the inequitable distribution of those resources than attempts to regulate the fertility of those who are most disadvantaged by the system in the first place.
ContributorsUhal, Julie Rose (Author) / Swanner, Leandra (Thesis director) / Koblitz, Ann (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05