Skirting the issue: Women and international health in historical perspective

Over the last decades women have become central to international health efforts, but most international health agencies continue to focus narrowly on the maternal and reproductive aspects of women's health. This article explores the origins of this paradigm as demonstrated in the emergence of women's health in the Rockefeller Foundation's public health programs in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. These efforts bore a significant reproductive imprint; women dispensed and received services oriented to maternal and childbearing roles. Women's health and social advocacy movements in Mexico and the United States partially shaped this interest. Even more important, the emphasis on women in the Rockefeller programs proved an expedient approach to the Foundation's underlying goals: promoting bacteriologically based public health to the government, medical personnel, business interests, and peasants; helping legitimize the Mexican state; and transforming Mexico into a good political and commercial neighbor. The article concludes by showing the limits to the maternal and reproductive health model currently advocated by most donor agencies, which continue to skirt-or sidestep-major concerns that are integral to the health of women.