In the absence of adequate healthcare, women in Brazil and Mexico are doing what they can to ensure their own health and well-being. But real change will require shifts in lifestyle, not just stop-gap measures.
“Sisters are doin’ it for themselves,” sang American rhythm and blues icon Aretha Franklin defiantly, in what became a wildly popular feminist anthem in the mid-1980s. While the song was a battle-hymn for female self-reliance in an earlier era, the view it expresses can apply as well to current efforts by women in some poor countries to fill in the gaps in their overstretched health systems. Today in Brazil and Mexico, for example, “sisters”—and, to a lesser extent, “brothers” too—are “doin’ it for themselves” in healthcare, or at least heading in that direction. And it’s not only the poorer women; wealthy women in these countries, similarly facing overburdened health systems, are doing more to ensure their own health and well-being.
