Why gender matters in health psychology research: Reflections on capdevila's negotiating health, mothering and "choice"

We were delighted to be asked to comment on Capdevila’s paper Negotiating health, mothering and “choice”. By reading the title we soon identified four keywords on which we, as feminist social psychologists and researchers, committed (and commit) our studies: “negotiate”, a verb that is, at the same time, active and reflexive, typically used to describe the relational and conversational process happening between people during their social encounters; “health”, that like “illness”, we recognise as a shared and intersubjective experience, that is contextually situated and constructed through social and relational interactions; “mothering”, that like “birth”, we understand not only as a physiological process, but also an event mired in historical and socio-cultural meaning; and finally, “choice”, that we identify with as women’s sense of agency or self-determination in making important decision affecting their lives. Indeed the paper represented for us an interesting occasion to reflect on the interrelation between these concepts, on the space that this debate currently has within mainstream health psychology research, and on possible alternative understandings of health and gender