HOLISTIC AND HUMANISTIC: AN ANALYSIS OF WOMEN HEALTH NARRATIVES IN RURAL INDIA

A female’s physical and psychological being is structured around the roles of belief systems and shared culture. The stigma around women’s health in India incorporates many factors, concepts, and theories. A woman’s diagnosis is seen as biologically biased and the medicine in itself is gender biased in practice. The reductionist approach explains an illness through the biological lens and not much favourable to women. Therefore, a holistic and humanistic approach recognises human illness as a whole concept with social, cultural, political, and personal factors. The medical humanities increase awareness of social, humanistic, and cultural dimensions around health. This paper studies two case study based out of rural India which speak comprehensively of possible prejudice and practices in the health sector. The research draws upon a conceptual study through medical humanities approach. Concluding upon the structures of biomedical discourses and how they can affect the agency of women’s bodies and being, and how gender and illness coalesce to reflect upon a woman’s suffering.