It is unfortunate that in the year 2007 feminism still gathers negative media attention with such ease. For the last few weeks the blogosphere has been buzzing with fervor about a study claiming that feminism is bad for people's health. The topic has gone viral, ranging from conservative blogs such as rightthinkinggirl to liberal blogs such as feministe. All you have to do is search for "feminism is bad for your health" and up pops 11,200 results.

The fact that this topic has garnered so much attention, including kudos from Rush Limbaugh, worries me deeply. It is reminiscent of the late nineteenth century theory that education was bad for women's health, which attempted to keep women out of higher education. Fortunately this theory was dispelled, as the one about feminism hopefully will be. As absurd as it sounded, I decided to go to the source and see if there's any merit to the claim that feminism is bad for people's health.

As I searched, I realized the discussion focused on a study done by researchers in Sweden. Although most of the blogs mentioned the journal the study came from, Social Science and Medicine, not one blog stated the name of the study. Because of this, as you can imagine, it took me some time to find the actual study everyone was talking about. Eventually I found it through my school's library and was somewhat surprised that the title of the study, Does increased gender equality lead to a convergence of health outcomes for men and women? A study of Swedish municipalities, did not contain the word "feminism." I realize not everyone will agree with me, but to me feminism is not the same as gender equality. I consider it an aspect of feminism, but certainly not the only aspect. I immediately took all of the attention as simply an overblown simplified version of whatever the study was claiming. Despite this, I read the study to see if in fact the researchers claimed that feminism was bad for people's health.

Just by reading the abstract I could tell this study was not about feminism, but rather it was about certain indicators of gender equality—mainly those associated with levels of employment. Furthermore, upon reading the entire study, I found that the word "feminism" wasn't even used and the word "feminist" was only used twice—both within the same paragraph. The researchers used what they called "general feminist theory" to guide their choice of dimensions and indicators, but from what I could tell the only major feminist theorist they cited was Sandra Harding and the text they used was published in 1986, over 20 years ago.

What the researchers loosely concluded ("The conclusion from our study must be tentative due to methodological uncertainties") was that "gender equality (not feminism) was generally correlated with poorer health for both men and women." But, the researchers also concluded that "(t)rue gender equality, with a simultaneous expansion of both men and women into previously gender-segregated spheres, has, however, the potential to both alleviate stress and counteract health-damaging behaviours."

What Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives have failed to report is that the researchers found certain people in Sweden to be in a transition period or what they termed "unfinished equality" where women have become more burdened and men have lost previous positions. Although more research needs to be done, the researchers generally believe that full gender equality could potentially ease any distress this transition process might be causing.

Aside from this, it is important to consider that there have also been studies claiming gender equality is beneficial to people's health. This article is one example:

Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., Gupta, V., & Prothrow-Stith, D. (1999). Women's status and the health of women and men: A view from the States. Social Science & Medicine, 48(1), 21-32.

The moral of this story is that you shouldn't believe everything you read. Although it took a little research to find the original article, it was definitely worth getting to the bottom of the story. My conclusion is that the researchers' conclusion is sketchy at best and needs to be replicated with different types of "feminist" dimensions and indicators and in different geographical areas. Although it is my personal belief that feminism and even gender equality are not bad for people's health, I would be willing to read more studies on the topic and welcome other people's varied opinions.