Institutionalizing women's oppression: the inherent risk in health policy that fosters community participation.

Current Canadian health policy is based on the implicit assumption that women are available to provide care in the home to the dependent, the ill, the elderly, and the physically and mentally disabled. Women are socialized from birth to accept caring roles within a traditional family structure, and current societal expectations and social policy reinforce this value system. Women's health can only be understood within the context of their lived experience of social inequity, medicalization, and family caregiving. Health care professionals are complicit in sustaining women's oppression by reinforcing these institutions of social control. For health policy to be responsive to women's needs, it must be based on research that considers the social complexity of ordinary women's lives.