Banner Womens global health leadership

  

The Department of Women's and Gender Studies has developed an innovative online Certificate Program in Women's Global Health Leadership in collaboration with the Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL) and National Nurses United (NNU), the largest nurses union in the United States. This certificate program capitalizes on the expertise of the Women's and Gender Studies faculty in the science and health studies, and the commitment of the IWL Consortium to foster women's leadership in all aspects of human endeavor, to provide a series of courses that addresses some of the most pressing issues on the global agenda. The certificate program also draws on the expertise of National Nurses United, which has been at the forefront in championing a comprehensive approach to women's health and preparing nurses in the United States to serve the health needs of women, families, and communities in all regions of the world.

  • For more information on tuition and fees, click HERE.
  • If you are interested in completing a Certificate Online for Women's Global Health Leadership, for the Visiting Students / SPRING 2022 registration form please click pdfHERE
  • If you have finished the requirements for the Certificate and need to apply for completion, please fill out the form located pdfHERE. If you are American University Transfer Student, please complete this Transfer Course Evaluation Form
  • For more information on other Certificate Programs at Rutgers, click HERE. 

Please note as of Fall 2019 new course titles have been established and reflected below.

REQUIRED COURSES (STUDENTS MUST TAKE BOTH / 6 CREDITS):

01:988:407 Women’s Global Health Movements

Global political and economic institutions and policies impact health globally. The course investigates how women’s non-governmental organizations have attempted to transform existing institutions and policies of global health governance such that people everywhere can lead healthier and more dignified lives.

Core Texts:

Anne Firth Murray. 2008. From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.

Ida Susser. 2009. AIDS, Sex, and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa. Malden, MA: Blackwell Press.

Miriam Ticktin. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Meredeth Turshen. 2007. Women's Health Movements: A Global Force for Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Featured Articles: "On Suffering and Structural Violence" (Farmer), "Women, Health, and Globalization" (Desai).

 

01:988:408 Gender, Economic Inequality &  Health

Domestic and global economic inequality place significant numbers of people at high risk for health crises even as they are denied access to care. This course investigates the “pathogenic” aspects of gender and economic inequality; how systems of unequal resource distribution contribute to wide disparities of health risk, access to healthcare, and clinical outcomes; and how global trade and trans­national migration affect health costs, healthcare delivery systems, and the availability of healthcare professionals.

Core Texts:

Paul Farmer, 2005. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Meredith Fort, Mary Anne Mercer, and Oscar Gish, eds. 2004. Sickness and Wealth: The Corporate Assault on Global Wealth. Cambridge: South End Press.

Cindy Patton, ed. 2010. Rebirth of the Clinic: Places and Agents in Contemporary Health Care. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

David Stuckler, and Snaja Basu. 2013. The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills. New York: Basic Books.

Featured Articles: "Gender and Global Health" (Hawkes and Buse), "Praxis and Policy" (Farmer).

top

ELECTIVE COURSES (STUDENTS MUST TAKE THREE / 9 CREDITS):

01:988:409 Gender, Environmental Justice & Health

In the last quarter century, the premise of the possibility of endless growth for the purpose of unlimited capital accumulation has met the inevitable challenges of resource exhaustion on a global scale and its human consequences. Markets and technological innovation are inadequate to solve the resulting environmental crises. This course examines the externalized business costs paid in the currency of hu­man health and health consequences such as illness caused by toxic industrial byproducts, injury from resource extraction processes such as nuclear fission and deep-water oil drilling, manifold health hazards of violent conflict over control of scarce resources in postcolonial states, and dangers that attend climate change.

Core Texts:

Rachel Carson. 2002. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

David Harvey. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to Urban Revolution. New York: Verso.

Fred Magdoff, and John Bellamy Foster. 2011. What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Christian Parenti. 2012. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York: Nation Books.

Vandana Shiva. 2002. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Vandana Shiva. 2005. Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Vandana Shiva. 2008. Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Vandana Shiva. 2012. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Sandra Steingraber. 2010. Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press.

Featured Articles: "Doubt Is Our Product" (Oreskes and Conway), "The Denial of Global Warming" (Oreskes and Conway), "Living Economies" (Shiva).

 

01:988:410 Debt, Crisis, and Women’s Health

Growing national debt has become a feature of increasing numbers of nations over the past 60 years, heightening dependence on international financial institutions, restricting the sphere of freedom of national policy makers and, consequently, severely cutting healthcare provisions. This course unsettles the conventional moral calculus of credit and debt, exploring the relationship between debt and economic crisis and examining the impacts of austerity policies on women’s health.

Core Texts:

Margaret Atwood. 2008. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Toronto: Anansi Press.

John Bellamy Foster, and Fred Magdoff. 2009. The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Colin Leys, and Stewart Player. 2011. The Plot against the NHS. Pontypool, Wales: Merlin Press.

Léonce Ndikumana, and James K. Boyce. 2011. Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York: Zed Books.

Éric Toussaint, and Damian Millet. 2010. Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Nalini Visvanathan, et al, eds. 2011. The Women, Gender and Development Reader, 2nd ed. New York: Zed Books.

Featured Articles: "Macroeconomic Governance, Gendered Inequality, and Global Crises" (Gill and Roberts), "SAPping the Poor" (Gloyd).

 

01:988:412 Global Food Politics: Health Consequences

Close to one billion people suffer from malnutrition and many more from food deprivation in the twenty-first century. As neoliberal trade policies have restructured national economies, new speculation in global commodities markets has limited access to food by the poor. This course investigates shifting modes of food production as local practices of subsistence agriculture have been replaced by export agriculture and global commodities markets. Students will compare the consequences of these changes for women as consumers in the global North as well as for women as producers of subsistence in the global South. It also analyzes the health effects of the creation of consumer markets for processed foods.

Core Texts:

A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, and Cristóbal Kay. 2009. Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question. New York: Routledge.

David Arnold. 1988. Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change. New York: Basil Blackwell.

Sasha Breger Bush. 2012. Derivatives and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and Poverty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mike Davis. 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. New York: Verso.

Eric Holt-Giménez, and Raj Patel. 2009. Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Cape Town: Pambazuka

Shahra Razavi, ed. 2002. Shifting Burdens: Gender and Agrarian Change under Neoliberalism. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian.

Featured Articles: "Health as a Meaningful Social Practice" (Crawford), "The Food Crisis of 2007 to 2008" (Zurayk).

 

01:988:413 The Global Pharmaceutical Economy & Health

Multinational pharmaceutical companies remain the primary developers of new drug regimens. The health effects of drug research and development, however, vary markedly from one region of the world to another. This course explores the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry, analyzing the distribution of burdens and benefits. It examines several ethical issues, such as clinical trials on populations in the Global South and the continuing sale of drugs across the Global South after they have been banned in the global North, among others.

Core Texts:

Joseph Dumit. 2012. Drugs For Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health. Durham: Duke University Press.

David Healy. 2013. Pharmageddon. Berkeley: University California Press.

Adriana Petryna, Andrew Lakoff, and Arthur Kleinman. 2006. Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices. Durham: Duke University Press.

Featured Articles: "Drug Marketing to Women" (Lawrence and Weinhouse), "Biopiracy Bioprospecting Symposium" in Signs.

 

01:988:414 Care Work

Nursing lies at the heart of the "care economy." Involving work that requires intensive physical labor, person-to-person communica­tion, and spatial proximity, the intimate nature of care work resists mechanization. In contrast to the production of commodities, the highly personalized labor of care is driven by human need rather than profit maximization. In nursing, skill entails the effective exercise of professional judgment. Focused on the cultivation and preservation of human capacities, this professional labor resists routinization and automation. The course explores recent efforts to heighten the profit-making potential of the care economy, and it considers the long-term implications of efforts to deskill and outsource care work.

Core Texts:

Eileen Boris & Rhacel Salazar Parreñas. 2010. Intimate Labors: Culture, Technologies and the Politics of Care. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Karen Flynn. 2011. Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

Arlie Hochschild. 2012. The Outsourced SelfIntimate Life in Market Times. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Pierrette-Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007. Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Featured Articles: "Nurses across Borders" (Choy), "In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis" (Giroux).

top