Grant: CIHR Café Scientifique Program

In the past, health research was conducted on men and the results were applied to women with the assumption that the findings were transferable. When we realized that this could be a harmful practice, health research began to address the unique biological, psychological and social concerns attached to women's health, centering them in research to promote their health. Now that agenda is responding to further needs for equity and inclusion. Women who have specific biological, psychological and social concerns relevant to their health needs as women of colour, trans women, lesbian and bisexual women, young women and others. have been left out of much of women's health research. Since they are women too, we need to understand how women's health research can be expanded to comprehensively address what is similar across all women, and specific to groups of women across the spectrum of women's health. Intersectionality is the name for a paradigm that calls attention to this complexity. Our Café Scientifique will explore what current research says about how an understanding of women's health is enriched by intersectionality through the discussion of recent work by university and community-based researchers that are working through these issues. These researchers are defining an agenda that is designed to promote the health being of every woman. By bringing together members of various communities, researchers, service providers and health policy makers, we hope to build awareness about the contributions such research is making, and generate ideas for future inclusive women's health research.