The fact that women experience the health care system differently than men is as issue of increasing importance to health professionals as well as the general public. Yet, while women's health problems have received unprecedented attention in recent years, the unique relationship between women and health care institutions remains little understood. In Women's Health Care: Activist Traditions and InstitutionalChange, Carol Weisman examines the nature of women's health care today and how U.S.women—as both providers and consumers of health care—are seeking to change health care institutions and policy.

Using a sociological perspective, Women's Health Care: Activist Traditions and Institutional Change critically examines contemporary assumptions about the health care of women in the U.S. and presents the basis for a policy agenda to improve the health care of women. The book assesses and synthesizes existing information on the state of women's health care while also presenting new data. Topics addressed include the historical, theoretical, and empirical: gender differences in health and health care; the multiplicity of providers from whom women receive health care; the need to integrate reproductive health care and other components of primary care; such new organizational forms as women's health centers; and financing.