Just Like a Woman: How Gender Science is Redefining What Makes Us Female - Hardcover

Hales, Dianne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553102281 ISBN 13: 9780553102284

Publisher: Bantam, 1999

Synopsis

Throw out the Stereotypes!

Just like a woman! The very phrase is a put-down, echoing the long-entrenched stereotypes of what it means to be female.  From earliest recorded history, women have been cast in terms of males: lesser versions that are frailer, smaller, dimmer, less competent, defective.  Never again.  This lively, meticulously documented book turns the dismissive old catchphrase inside out.

It is only in the past few years that researchers in many fields have actively focused on what being female really means.  Their startling conclusion: almost every assumption made about women--physical, medical, historical, psychological--turns out to be untested, unproven, or untrue.  Rather than classifying women only by their biology (as the medical establishment has), or denying they are biological creatures (as some feminists have), Just Like a Woman presents the cutting-edge findings in anthropology, physiology, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and medicine that are redefining what a woman is.

These findings reveal the complex interconnections between all aspects of a woman's life from infancy to old age.  Gender science is confirming that the female of the species is not the second sex but the separate sex.  She is as powerful as the male but with different strengths: intuitiveness, adaptability, durability, sensitivity, sensuality.  Her brain is smaller but more densely packed with neurons, her senses of smell and hearing more acute, her core body temperature higher.  She processes emotions and perceives pain differently; she sleeps more lightly; she is more vulnerable to certain mental disorders and more resistant to others; her body reacts differently from a man's to many medications; and the rhythms of her monthly cycles shape not only her fertility but her mood, her creativity, and her resilience.  These are only some of the special aspects spelled out in this book, and all of them are crucial to a woman's understanding of her body, her mind, her spirit, and her relationships with those she loves.  From conception on, she is female to the core.

This stereotype-shattering book lays out what it means to live in a woman's body, think with a woman's brain, drink in the world with a woman's senses, and react with a woman's sensibility to the stresses and elations of her multiple roles.  Refreshingly free of ideology, Just Like a Woman offers a stunningly liberating message that expands our concept of human potential and will forever change the way every woman views herself.

About this title

About the Author

Dianne Hales is one of the country's most widely published and honored writers on health subjects, the author of twelve texts and lay books, and most recently the co-author, with Robert E.  Hales, M.D., of the award-winning compendium of mental health and mental disorders, Caring for the Mind.  She lives in Marin County, California, with her husband and daughter.

From the Back Cover

Early praise for Just Like a Woman:

"A superb achievement--Dianne Hales has challenged accepted 'wisdom' and presented alternative ways of looking at gender in the light of the exciting emergence of 'gender science.' This book is at the cutting edge and should be widely read."
--Carol C. Nadelson, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Past President, American Psychiatric Association

"In Just Like a Woman, Dianne Hales clearly explains how women are different from men in important ways and eloquently describes why these differences matter so much. Highly recommended!"
--Dean Ornish, M.D., President and Director, Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF School of Medicine

"Just Like a Woman is an extraordinary book about the unique biology of women. It provides up-to-the-minute scientific information that's accurate and balanced, yet engaging to read. A fantastic book!"
--Miriam Nelson, Ph.D., Director, Center for Health Promotion and Physical Activity at the School of Nutrition, Tufts University, and author of Strong Women Stay Young

"A book on women which is both factual and moving--a rare combination! A masterful book--From both a scientific and a literary perspective, this is a unique contribution to our understanding of the psychology of women."
--Vivien Burt, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Women's Life Center, Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA School of Medicine

"I could not put this spectacular book down. Dianne Hales synthesizes scientific information in an informative and easily readable way. Just Like a Woman should help to revolutionize the way women are viewed in the world."
--Beverly Whipple, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N, Professor, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and President, American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists

"This lively account of the newest developments in gender-specific medicine should be obligatory reading for every woman who has felt confused, patronized, and/or misunderstood in her doctor's office....A resource for patient and physician alike."
--Marianne Legato, M.D., Director, Partnership for Women's Health, Columbia University

From the Inside Flap

e Stereotypes!

Just like a woman! The very phrase is a put-down, echoing the long-entrenched stereotypes of what it means to be female. From earliest recorded history, women have been cast in terms of males: lesser versions that are frailer, smaller, dimmer, less competent, defective. Never again. This lively, meticulously documented book turns the dismissive old catchphrase inside out.

It is only in the past few years that researchers in many fields have actively focused on what being female really means. Their startling conclusion: almost every assumption made about women--physical, medical, historical, psychological--turns out to be untested, unproven, or untrue. Rather than classifying women only by their biology (as the medical establishment has), or denying they are biological creatures (as some feminists have), Just Like a Woman presents the cutting-edge findings in anthropology, physiology, psychology

Reviews

"Hales resolutely eschews politics of all kinds ... [she] focuses upon the implications of recent scientific research for our understanding of women and the ways they differ from men. "

As Hales (Caring for the Mind) argues on the one hand against old stereotypes of women as inferior and, on the other hand, against those feminists who insist on no difference between men and women, she finds that fundamental differences between the sexes exist and are cause for celebration. In three sections, she gathers a vast amount of biological and physiological research on animal behavior, genetics, hormones, women's health; findings on the female life cycle from girlhood through menstruation, pregnancy, infertility and menopause; and investigations into the mind, from the brain to emotions, mental disorders, sexuality and spirituality. The first two sections offer a heavy-handed determinism: in the way female seals jockey for choice rock positions and entice male seals to fight each other, Hales sees the evolutionary roots of the differing competitive styles of corporate men and women. More interesting are the crucial medical discoveries she reveals, especially concerning heart disease: the traditional test for detecting heart disease in men is far less reliable for women, whose heart attacks often don't show the same symptoms as men's. While Hales claims to steer clear of ideology, her choice of facts reinforces the idea that the differences between men and women are what matters most about who we are; often she replaces a disparaging set of stereotypes with a valorizing one. Only in the chapters on the brain and emotions does she suggest that men and women may be as similar as they are different or that the differences may be caused by social rather than biological factors. As absorbing as it is contradictory, her book will be welcomed by readers who want to know why women are different from men but will be frustrating to those more interested in the significance of those differences.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An overview of recent gender-specific research that is redefining womanhood, drawing on biology, anthropology, and psychology. Hales (author, most recently, of Caring for the Mind: The Comprehensive Guide to Mental Health) challenges the long-held scientific notion that woman is abnormal and inferior [to men]in body and therefore in mind and spirit. This has influenced among other things, medical research and its emphasis on male health. While celebrating a new research focus on women (due, she says, to an increase in the number of women scientists), she acknowledges that our lack of knowledge on the subject of woman-ness is still appalling. She also acknowledgesbut disagrees withthe view strongly held by some that gender-based research will perpetuate a notion of women as second-rate organisms. Hales doesn't have the heavy-duty scientific credentials to put this notion completely to rest, but she does mount a convincing argument that the process of evolution would have long ago eliminated ``the stereotyped `female'docile, dumb and totally dependent .'' Her report here is loosely divided into three sections. She first looks at anthropological and biological research on female roles in various species and societies. Part II concentrates on the stages of women's lives, including such hot issues as ``childfree'' living, fertility, perimenopause, and menopause. Finally, Hales considers ``The Woman Within''how mental, emotional, psychiatric, sexual, and spiritual issues may differ in women from the accepted standard that has been set by studies done only on men. Readers who are up to date on health columns in women's magazines will find few surprises hereHales doesn't carry the scientific weight (of, say, Bruce Bagemihl's recent Biological Exuberance) necessary to challenge an outdated, thoroughly entrenched scientific frame of reference. And she does slip too easily into unenlightening cheerleaderish prose (``No longer the girls they once were, women at midlife are smarter and savvier than they've ever been''). But as a general look around and update on research into women's health and life cycle issues, this is fine. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Hales, a prolific and much-honored magazine writer, uses the results of medical and psychological studies as well as anecdotes to make a confident case for women and men as divergent evolutionary, biological, and emotional creations. Not that there's anything wrong with that. While there is some repetition of information, such as in the chapters that focus on menarche and menopause, the text is well organized overall. Hales's tone is matter of fact, and she stresses when research is preliminary or sketchy. Nevertheless, her fiercely nonpolitical book may be controversial because it refuses to provide a standard answer about gender equality. Hales concludes that gender differences are a product of natural selection, a successful, ongoing evolutionary strategy whereby women and men complement each other. By pulling together current knowledge on the subject, Hales has provided an engrossing snapshot of today's complicated gender landscape that future historians will use as a reference. For all science collections.
-AKelly Hensley, East Tennessee State Univ. Lib., Johnson City
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Unasked Questions

Not long ago, Marianne Legato recalls, a scientist reported his preliminary findings from tests of a new compound on laboratory rats--all male.  "What happens in females?" she asked.

"The same," he replied.

"How do you know?" she inquired.

"Because females respond just like males," he answered.

"But how can you be sure if you haven't tested females?" she pressed.  Flustered, he insisted that he "just knew."

"I couldn't understand how he could possibly be so sure," Legato says.  "Then, finally, it dawned on me: Dolly the sheep wasn't the first clone, Eve was.  This man still assumed that women are essentially small men." (No one ever thinks of the converse: men as large women.)

A lack of actual proof for their premises has never gotten in the way of medical experts' assumption that they "just know" the way women are.  Aristotle "just knew" that women nursed their babies with blanched menstrual blood stored in their breasts.  Medical illustrators in the Middle Ages "just knew" that women were duplicates of men with an inside-out penis for a vagina, an inverted scrotum for a womb, and testicles for ovaries.  Voltaire "just knew" that "the delicacy of women's limbs render them ill-suited to any type of labor or occupation that requires strength or endurance." Physicians of the late nineteenth century "just knew" that removal of a woman's ovaries was the best way to "repair" mental disorders--the reason, according to an 1889 report from the U.S.  Surgeon General, for 51 percent of such operations.

Even today doctors routinely perform tests, prescribe drugs, and recommend treatments on the assumption that they will be as effective and beneficial for women as for men.  How do they know? The truth is they often don't.  From 1977 to 1993 the FDA banned women of childbearing potential from participating in the safety tests of new drugs to prevent possible damage to their unborn children and reproductive capacity.  To scientists, this offered an advantage: They did not have to take into account such messy variables as women's fluctuating hormones or monthly cycles.  As exclusion of women from all sorts of medical testing became common, this ban extended even to women who'd undergone sterilization or were past reproductive age.  In a further attempt to keep the science "clean," laboratory researchers experimented only on male animals.  As a result, in the landmark studies that shaped many modern medical practices, females were written out--and off.

The landmark Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trials (known, aptly enough, as Mr.  Fit), which studied vulnerability to heart disease, the number-one killer of both sexes, included 12,000 to 15,000 men--and no women.  The Physician's Health Study of the potential benefits of taking an aspirin a day to lower the risk of heart attack looked at 22,071 physicians--none of them women.  A major evaluation of coffee intake and its impact on stroke and heart attack studied 45,589 men--and no women.  Only in 1998 did researchers discover that HIV tests misstate a woman's need for treatment.  Even when a woman and a man have the same amount of virus in their blood, the woman is at a more advanced state of infection and at much greater risk of developing AIDS.  Incredibly, even a study of the impact of obesity on the risk of breast and endometrial cancer--female diseases--extrapolated from only male subjects.

Aging--something women do better, or at least longer--has been primarily studied in men.  In 1958 the federally sponsored researchers who launched what was to become the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging decided not to include women, even though they make up two thirds of the elderly and more than 70 percent of the old old (those over age eighty-five).  The reason was what former congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, one of the first champions of women's health research, dubbed "the rest room excuse."

At the time, the investigators had to work out of a single room at the city hospital.  The study participants had access to only one rest room, which they had to share with elderly male patients in an adjacent hospital ward.  Rather than ask women subjects to use this facility during overnight evaluations, the scientists excluded them altogether.  As the budget for this high-profile project grew, the researchers acquired more space--and more rest rooms.  However, for twenty years their studies included no women--an omission that did not keep the scientists from entitling their initial four-hundred-page report Normal Human Aging.

The very fact that research never took women's menstrual cycling into account has created a black hole in scientific understanding of femaleness.  We know that women's bodies work differently at various times of the month, that temperature fluctuates, that fluid volume and weight increase, and that food moves through the digestive system at different rates.  But only recently have physicians realized that various diagnostic tests, including cholesterol and blood fat measurements, yield different results at different times of the month and that the timing of medical treatments during a woman's cycle can affect their efficacy--sometimes with life-or-death implications.

According to an intriguing report at an American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, women who undergo breast cancer surgery during the second half, or luteal phase, of their monthly cycles (days 14 to 28) are twice as likely to suffer a recurrence as those who are operated on earlier in their cycles.  Recent research suggests that women with insulin-dependent diabetes may have higher blood sugar levels during the luteal phase of their cycles because fluctuations in sex hormones affect insulin blood levels.

Many medications also have stronger or weaker effects at different times in a woman's cycle and may require adjustments in dosage.  However, the doses of most medications--along with their safety and efficacy--have never been tested in women or studied across the menstrual cycle.  This may account for the fact that adverse drug reactions, including ones as serious as seizures, are reported twice as often in women.

"More than half of the drugs prescribed today have been tested only in men," says psychiatrist Steven Dubofsky, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, who notes that because of differences in size, absorption, metabolism, and liver function, "there can be tremendous gender differences in both beneficial and adverse effects in women." Yet when Dubofsky tested an experimental medication for Alzheimer's disease, the research review committee banned female participants.  "The reason was that women might become pregnant--although the average age in my study was eighty-two."

Even treatments for problems that are more common in women have rarely been tested in them.  Research on aspirin's usefulness in preventing migraine headaches, which strike far more women, included only men.  Appetite suppressants and diet drugs--used far more often by women--have been tested almost exclusively in men.  Men traditionally were the sole subjects of tests of drugs to treat depression, a disorder that affects twice as many women.

The relatively few studies that have been done on pharmacokinetics (how a drug is absorbed) in women have identified potentially significant gender differences.  Women metabolize propranolol, a medication used to treat cardiac arrhythmias, more slowly than men.  Blood levels of Inderal, used for migraines or high blood pressure, rise higher in women.  Other drugs, including acetaminophen and aspirin, several benzodiazepines (antianxiety agents), and lidocaine (a topical anesthetic and a treatment for certain arrhythmias), take longer to clear a woman's body.

Many medications also interact in ways that have a unique impact on women.  Oral contraceptives--used by one in five American women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four--can raise blood levels of some psychiatric drugs so high that a woman on the pill may require only a fraction of the standard dose.  Other medications, such as the antiseizure drugs carbamazepine and phenytoin, may decrease the effectiveness of birth control pills and increase the chance of an unwanted pregnancy.

When scientists do study the effects of drugs or other treatments on women, they often learn much that can benefit both sexes.  Consider the most significant exception to the no-females-allowed approach to health research, the Harvard Nurses' Health Study, which has followed 121,000 women for more than twenty years.  Its participants, who have filled out questionnaires and sent in blood samples and even toenail clippings over all these years, have taught us much about many common health threats--some exclusively female, such as the risk of breast cancer from birth control pills (which seems minimal), and some universal, such as the most effective means of preventing colon cancer.

Yet any research investigation that excludes half the human race--female or male--shortchanges both genders.  Learning about human health and longevity by looking only at men, one biologist points out, is like trying to run a successful department store by studying only those that went bankrupt.  "More research on women is not a luxury to be indulged in only to pacify feminists, to secure the female vote, or to attract women to a hospital center," says Legato.  "Studying women i...

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553102281
• ISBN 13: 9780553102284
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416