Globalism and Gendering Cancer

Book excerpt: This book connects a rhetorical examination of medical and public health policy documents with a humanistic investigation of cultural texts to uncover the link between gendered representations of health and cancer. The author argues that in western biomedical contexts cancer is considered a women’s disease and their bodies are treated as inherently oncogenic or cancer-producing, which leads to biomedical practices that adversely impact their bodily autonomy. She examines how these biases traverse national boundaries by examining the transmission of biomedical cancer practices from the US and international organizations to Kenya. This book is suited to scholars and students working in the fields of Rhetorics of Health and Medicine, Medical Humanities and Gender Studies. It is also of interest to medical professionals and readers interested in globalism and global health.