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Biomedical subjects

P Van Esterik

Publications and source records attributed to P Van Esterik.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1994

Breastfeeding and feminism.

Breastfeeding empowers women and contributes to gender equality; therefore, it is an important feminist, human rights, and women's issue. Although seldom addressed as a feminist issue, breastfeeding is paradigmatically one because it requires rethinking basic issues such as the sexual division of labor, the fit between women's productive and reproductive lives, and the role of physiological processes in defining gender ideology. The conceptual problems which emerge in the fit between breastfeeding promotion and feminist theory include the place of motherhood; technology versus liberation; fear of biological determinism; breasts and sexuality; locating guilt; personal choice; romanticizing breastfeeding; and conceptualizing women's work. Feminist theorists who take up breastfeeding as an issue and medical researchers who address questions raised by feminist theory have the occasion to produce a non-dualistic feminist problematic that would draw together a wide range of theories and practices that go beyond breastfeeding and mothering. The failure to develop this analysis could have serious consequences.

Breast Feeding↗
PubMed1988

To strengthen and refresh: herbal therapy in Southeast Asia.

Throughout Southeast Asia herbal tonic drinks are a long established part of the health adaptation system of both rural and urban households. A recent study on infant feeding practices in urban poor households revealed a differential use of postpartum herbal tonics in Bangkok, Thailand and Semarang, Indonesia. This paper explores the cultural meaning of this difference between comparable groups of mothers, focussing on the colonial and neocolonial development of the medical systems, the transmission of knowledge about herbal therapies, and how the tonics fit into the food-drug classification system in both countries.

Adult↗