| Summary: |
This study looks at how poor women in Tamil Nadu make decisions about their health and kinds of health care they access. In a society where multiple health-care systems prevail, women’s attitudes toward biomedicine and indigenous forms of health care play a major role in decision-making. In urban, rural and tribal areas of the state, women carefully negotiate their way through the system, making choices depending on their understanding of health and illness. Neighborhood pharmacies in the cities, and untrained/semi-trained ‘homeopathic’ doctors in the rural and tribal areas exemplify a significant shift in favor of biomedicine in the three sites. Through ethnographic accounts, this presentation demonstrates both an active involvement of women in health care decision-making and argues for a need to understand this process toward improving women’s health.
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