Women's Health Today

Twenty-five years ago, a group of women attending one of the first "Women's Liberation" conferences in Boston began discussing how little information they had about their own health care. So much of what they needed to know to be informed patients at the doctor's office, they thought, was usually either deemed taboo or unimportant by society. They repeated this conversation among their friends in the following days, and realized how prevalent these feelings were. Through this series of conversations, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective was created.

Begun as a group of 11 women who set about to compile a list of the most respectful and knowledgeable obstetricians and gynecologists in the area, Boston Women's Health Book Collective had soon gathered pages and pages of information about where women should look for resources within the health care system. They began to teach their friends, and photocopied the pages so that others could so the same. Soon, the group decided to print up the information for distribution to area women who had heard about the project and were asking for their own copies of the information. Printed on flimsy newsprint and sold for forty cents, the first copy of the now-ubiquitous women's health manual Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women was born.

The book provided clear language and diagrams, which appealed to women who had felt that for years information about their bodies, not to mention disease, childbearing, contraception and abortion, had been kept from public discussion. The information in OBOS was candid and accessible, and proved to be in such high demand that in the following months the founders began to realize that the material they were compiling was becoming an indispensable resource for women. As requests for the book flooded in, the founders joked that one day they would sell a million copies. As of last week, the book has sold over four million copies, been translated into fifteen languages, and is a bestseller in 30 countries, with more in the planning stages.

The book was not simply a convenient reference manual. In many ways, it represented the beginning of a revolution in women's health. In contrast to an atmosphere in medicine in which diseases such as breast cancer were kept a secret, research was often based on the bodies of men and doctors often did not expect that women could be partners in their health care decisions, the book has enabled countless women to become proactive in determining the direction of their health care. It has encouraged them to truly make the demand for recognition of their personal health needs into a strong political force.

At a celebration Friday night to honor the twenty-fifth anniversary of Boston Women's Health Book Collective, one woman spoke of the impact that OBOS has had on her life. One year during college, her school introduced a new course, "The Biology of Women." In spite of the enormous waiting list, this woman was lucky enough to be able to register for the class. On the first day, all students were given a diagram of the female body to identify "key parts." The professor returned the results the next day--only 30% of women could identify these parts. "Don't worry," said the professor, "we'll change all that." The text for the class? Our Bodies, Ourselves.

The anniversary celebration was filled with testimony from countless women who echo these sentiments--women who still treasure their first, now well-worn and tattered copy of the book and can remember vividly how they first came to own it. These same women are now purchasing their commemorative 25th editions, with updated information on new areas of study such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Today, while the Women's Health Movement still faces challenges worldwide, on this anniversary of the beginning of this movement we should salute the Boston women who started the revolution.

Corinne E. Funk's column appears on alternate Tuesdays.