HDR defense Alexandra Alvergne | "Écologie Évolutive de la Santé des Femmes : Approche Bioculturelle" (Evolutionary Ecology of Women's Health: A Biocultural Approach)

Summary:

The evolutionary ecology of women's health: a biocultural approach

Is being a woman a disease? This provocative question highlights the traditional pathologization of the female reproductive function in Western biomedicine since the 19th century. Recently, there has been a call from the social sciences to move beyond 'bikini' research, i.e. focused solely on reproductive health, to address 21st century women's health challenges. While these calls are long overdue, I would argue that it is misleading to separate 'non-reproductive' health from 'reproductive' health. In fact, understanding the female reproductive system as it has evolved is fundamental to understanding women's health. Through an evolutionary prism, health is merely a means to enable reproduction, and variation in reproductive function across ecologies is expected rather than pathological. I also advocate biocultural methods to identify the pathways by which ecology shapes health and disease.

The presentation will be divided into four main segments: (1) the ecology of women's reproductive behavior in the context of demographic transition; (2) the physiology of the menstrual cycle, to elucidate patterns of 'normal' variation and the development of diseases such as endometriosis ; (3) the link between reproductive and 'non-reproductive' health, highlighting variations in disease severity over the menstrual cycle and the cost of reproduction to women's aging; and (4) the causes and consequences of gendered norms (excision, matrilineality) for women's health. This interdisciplinary research program contributes to reducing the women's health gap by highlighting the trade-offs between reproduction and health across social and cultural ecologies.