Within the framework of this essay, it is required to give an overview of the main philosophical currents in the field of women’s health care. The concept of holistic health care is interpreted as a theory of human fullness and balance between the body, emotions, and spirituality. The idea of ​​women’s empowerment implies an increase in the legal field for women, which also emphasizes the priority of women’s decisions in health care. Finally, autonomy shows itself as a combination of many concepts related to women’s independence. A stumbling block in discussions about women’s health is the aspect of motherhood, interpreted as the embodiment of socially patriarchal dominance over freedom of choice and women as a minority. Feminist criticism has ambiguous views on the problem of motherhood but generally converges on the need for an individual choice for each woman. Female health care can be accurately represented in these three broad concepts: holistic medicine, female empowerment, and autonomy.
Holistic medicine, when placed in the context of feminist theory, seems to be quite a valuable methodology that goes beyond medicine as an exact science. The holistic view of a person perceives a person as a kind of unified whole – mutual integration between the body, mind, spirit, and emotions. Such treatment implies that the doctor seeks to find ways to influence the personality in order to improve its general, harmonious state. Based on the understanding that a person is not just a biological mechanism, given the need for patient-oriented ethics, the medical community takes into account a person’s psychological and spiritual state. It is obvious that the patient’s mental attitude can be crucially important for his recovery, and this is the basis of this philosophy of health.
It seems useful to apply holistic ideas about the usefulness of a person to a portrait of a woman in modern society. The complete fulfillment of personal tasks and the satisfaction of needs is the basis of the legal existence of a person, and this issue arises more acutely within the framework of the oppression of women’s freedom of choice. Taking as an example a study on the treatment of hysterectomy in women in West Sumatra, the benefit of addressing basic holistic needs as a step in treatment should be noted (Mahardika, 2021). The needs of a woman and any full-fledged person imply a close network of relationships between caring for the family, one’s own activity and spirituality, and acceptance of one’s own personality. All this is fully consistent with the needs of a modern woman and is an important concept of the philosophy of women’s health care.
The philosophy of female empowerment stands for the empowerment and legal rights of women around the world. This movement is interpreted in two ways – in the legal field and as an admission of the female individual point of view. It cannot be underestimated to what extent the female will and the legal field can be limited in some countries of the modern world. Positive socio-economic factors provide a platform for this movement – a study from Nigeria showed that empowered women are changing their views on motherhood (Ahuru, 2021). This means that the influence of the patriarchal standard on women is initially strong enough and takes away from them the opportunity to take care of their bodies and health on their own. Women’s rights in health care are indeed most often discussed in connection with the question of childbirth, and it is against this background that the autonomous philosophy of women’s health care will be analyzed.
In fact, at the moment, millions of women around the world do not have full bodily autonomy – the freedom to choose a life path without regard to maternal duty. Reproductive choice is the basis of the autonomic concept and is closely related to both the woman’s empowerment and her holistic wholeness. However, autonomy seems to be a crucial philosophical concept in the women’s health paradigm, generalizing and incorporating many other ideas.
One of the fundamental conditions for patriarchal oppression and retention of control over women, stated by feminist philosophers, is the issue of childbirth. Feminist criticism of different periods has conflicting points of view on this issue, which has only been complicated by new reproductive technologies. If fertilization methods emphasized the woman’s choice and politicized the process of conceiving and bearing a child, they would be more fully encouraged. The search for an alternative to traditional motherhood as a way of women’s liberation is a popular ethical and philosophical topic for discussion. According to feminists, women should be aware of all the possibilities for the realization of the maternal instinct, an alternative to live fertilization. In this way, a woman is not under pressure from the demands of her gender role from the male.
The involvement of the male partner in the process of motherhood is also extremely important in the framework of empowerment. On the one hand, this practice makes it possible for the male half to feel at least part of the emotional and physical unrest experienced by a woman. On the other hand, statistics indicate that more liberated women are less likely to visit doctors with their husbands (Bello, 2019). Thus, the question of male involvement in the issues of female corporality remains open and realized individually in each family unit.
This aspect of life is part of individual freedom and the absence of obligations to society in the aspect of motherhood seems to be a condition of female empowerment. The issue of motherhood is problematic and because of this, the concept of a woman’s responsibility and her duty to society is manipulated within the family or the patriarchal political regime. The inability of a woman to make decisions on her own due to social pressure is an obvious case of exploitation and masculine manipulation (LeMoncheck, 2020). The opportunity to distort one’s life beyond recognition due to the pressure of social and family institutions seems to attack a woman’s autonomy, independence and the right to choose.
Based on this, it seems that the issue of motherhood and freedom from this duty is the key to the liberation of women in a patriarchal society. A woman’s ability to independently choose her future and, in particular, take care of her own health is the basis of women’s autonomy and independence. Given how crucial motherhood is in a woman’s life, it makes sense to say that autonomy should be a fundamental philosophical concept when discussing women’s health care. The possibility of choice does not allow a person to lose his identity, that is, to be realized in accordance with his own free and non-imposing desires, which is probably the meaning of the life of a harmonious human unit.
References
Ahuru, R. R. (2021). The influence of women empowerment on maternal and childcare use in Nigeria. International Journal of Healthcare Management 14(3), 690-699. Web.
Bello, F. O., Musoke, P., Kwena, Z., Owino, G. O., Bukusi, E. A., Darbes, L., & Turan, J. M. (2018). The role of women’s empowerment and male engagement in pregnancy healthcare seeking behaviors in western Kenya.Women & Health 59(8), 892-906. Web.
LeMoncheck, L. (2020). Philosophy, gender politics, and in vitro fertilization: A feminist ethics of reproductive healthcare. Women, Medicine, Ethics and the Law, 130-147. Web.
Mahardika, P., Setyowati, S., & Afiyanti, Y. (2021). The holistic needs of women with hysterectomy: A grounded theory study.EnfermerĂa ClĂnica 31(2), 24-28. Web.