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9 Books on Women’s Health & Gynecology

Books remain the undisputable golden standard in the distribution of information. That’s why it is only fitting that they have their own month where they are celebrated like the undoubted Kings and Queens of knowledge and wisdom.

Did you know that October is considered by some countries as a national book month?

It is important to make informed decision about own body – that is why we put together a few pieces that spread awareness and answer questions about women’s health and gynecology. Let’s take a read!

1. The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina

In the book, Dr. Jen Gunter debunks many of the myths about the vagina, empowering women through actual medical knowledge about their own body. The book debunks many folktales about how to take care of the vagina, like for example the belief that eating sweets will cause yeast infections—it doesn’t.

Dr. Jen Gunter is an OB/GYN who also writes for several news outlets and has her own show, Jensplaining. (1,2)

2. She-ology: The Definitive Guide to Women’s Intimate Health. Period.

Author and leading OB/GYNE Sherry Ross takes on the long-ingrained detachment women feel about their vagina and shedding light on the misconception about the workings of this very special body part.

Because of centuries of suppression, many women are hesitant to talk about certain women’s health topics that are considered to be culturally taboo, like questions about their vagina that many women find embarrassing.

Sherry Ross is a leading gynecologist obstetrician with 35 years of practice. It is her calling to empower women by supplying medical knowledge in discussions about their reproductive system.  (3,4,5)

3. New Dimensions in Women’s Health

This book is a complete and constantly updated holistic view of women’s health of all cultures, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and sexual orientations.

The book will tackle all and any issue involving women’s well-being, from physical health to mental health, sexual health, reproductive health, pregnancy and childbirth, up to the menopausal phase as well as a section about hormonal therapy. (6,7)

4. How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control

This book investigates how birth control pills affect women’s mental health. Divided into 3 sections, the book first introduces how the body works and the processes that govern it. Then it discusses how the pill affects a woman’s body, specifically her brain.

The last part tackles the social implication that the side effect of pills does to a woman and her relationships with the people around her.

The author, Sarah E. Hill, a PhD with a degree in psychology does not aim to scare women away from pills, but rather to give them the power to choose for themselves whether to take the risk or not. (8,9,10,11)

5. Diagnosis Female: How Medical Bias Endangers Women’s Health

Emily Dwass exposes a problem in the medical field that negatively affects women—the problem of gender bias that results in misdiagnosis and sometimes outright dismissal of women’s legitimate health complaints because doctors can’t find what is wrong with them. This is a result of gender bias in medical research.

In her book, Dwass profiles women who have experienced this mistreatment and present their stories in her book. She writes about health, nutrition and many more for different publications such as The New York Times, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. (12,13,14)

6. Ask Me About My Uterus

This book is about the true experience of a woman named Abby Norman who was misdiagnosed about her health problem by doctors and later has her complaint treated as pain hysteria.

The book is about her journey and struggles to understand what is wrong with her body. 

Having left college because of her illness, she began working in a hospital and by her own research discovered what doctors have failed to see—the cause of her illness. The disturbing story is just one of the many experiences of women whose medical complaints are ignored because of gender bias. (15,16,17)

7. The Vulva Owner’s Manual on Birth Control: Finding Your Best Option for Contraception (The Vulva Owner’s Manuals)

The Vulva Owner’s Manual on Birth Control is about the efforts of the women in the Miller family to find the right contraceptive method for each of them as they face the different stages of their womanhood.

From this book you learn many things about the different contraceptives and their effects on the body. The book highlights the importance of finding a contraceptive method that fits your lifestyle and your physical condition.

Kristine Shields has a doctorate in public health, a practicing nurse for women’s health and writer. (18,19,20)

8. Unwell Women

Unwell Women can be described as an exposé on how society has treated women for the most part in human history. From the early Greeks to the Modern age, women’s well-being has been treated as less important than that of men.

Elinor Cleghorn, the author, was also a victim of this inequality as she has been misdiagnosed for a long time about her health condition.

This led her to study the history of how women’s medical complaints were dismissed as hysteria, psychogenic, and just plain imagination. The book is eye-opening and helps the readers, both men and women, understand the problem of misdiagnosis plaguing women nowadays.

Dr. Elinor Cleghorn works as a writer and researcher for gender equality. She has a PhD and is a feminist historian. (21,22,23,24)

9. Let’s Talk About Down There: An OB-GYN Answers All Your Burning Questions…without Making You Feel Embarrassed for Asking

Women had always felt embarrassed when talking about sexuality and their own physical body, especially their reproductive organs. That is why this book is written. Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an OB/GYNE and TikTok star wrote this book to help answer women’s questions that they are afraid to ask.  With a wealth of experience in the field, Dr. Jen is ready and willing to dispel the myths surrounding women and their reproductive system  (25,26)

Sources:

  1. Dr. Jen Gunter
  2. ‘For So Long, Women Have Been Marginalized by Medicine’
  3. Dr. Sherry
  4. She-ology: The Definitive Guide to Women’s Intimate Health. Period.
  5. She-Ology
  6. New Dimensions in Women’s Health
  7. Helaine Bader
  8. Sarah E. Hill, PhD
  9. Dr Sarah E Hill: ‘We have a blind spot about how the pill influences women’s brains’
  10. How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control
  11. How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control (Paperback)
  12. Emily Dwass
  13. Diagnosis Female: How Medical Bias Endangers Women’s Health
  14. Diagnosis Female
  15. Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain
  16. Ask Me About My Uterus
  17. Ask Me About My Uterus A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Womens Pain
    by Abby Norman
  18. KRISTINE SHIELDS
  19. The Vulva Owner’s Manual on Birth Control: Finding Your Best Option for Contraception
  20. The Vulva Owner’s Manual on Birth Control: Finding Your Best Option for Contraception (Paperback)
  21. Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine And Myth in a Man-Made World
  22. Unwell Women : A Journey Through Medicine And Myth in a Man-Made World
  23. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/books/review/unwell-women-elinor-cleghorn.html
  24. Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn review – battle for the female body
  25. JENNIFER LINCOLN, MD, IBCLC
  26. Let’s Talk About Down There: An OB-GYN Answers All Your Burning Questions…without Making You Feel Embarrassed for Asking 

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