The work of professors, gender inequalities, and health at public universities.

This study aimed to problematize aspects of the work of professors in relation to gender, assessment policies, and health. For this purpose, a qualitative social investigation was conducted within the aspect of participatory studies and the views of materialist feminism. An analysis of the material was carried out through content analysis, according to the topic, using four main themes: conflicts between professors' work and domestic work; professors' work, motherhood, and guilt; policies for the assessment of professors and gender relations; and the sexual division of labor and teaching.

[Notebooks on health and work: diaries of public university professors].

The main objective of this article is to present and analyze the research instrument called "health and work notebooks", focusing on the production of knowledge concerning professors' work at a public university. The notebooks serve as a qualitative and participant research technique that is appropriate for the in-depth study of relations between health and work, viewing workplaces as privileged spaces for exercising effective action in the defense of health and the work experience as the principal material for analysis. The notebooks' special quality as a research technique lies in worker's role as protagonist in the research, as the diary's author and co-participant in the study.

[Drug abuse and eating disorders in women: symptoms of gender discomfort?].

The article discusses drug abuse and eating disorders from the critical gender and healthcare perspectives, postulating that subjective suffering can be expressed in the body through psychosomatic illnesses. From this perspective, craving for drugs or superfluous consumer goods, just as illness from self-imposed hunger in pursuit of an ideal of slimness, as in anorexia and bulimia, can be symptoms that expose the woman's suffering. A review in the fields of public health and feminist theories highlights the magnitude of the phenomena of medicalization and commodification of health in the psychiatrization of female discomfort.

[Gender signs on female smoking: a sociological approach to women's cigarette smoking].

Based on an extensive review of specialized literature about woman smoking, this essay aims to promote a better understanding of this issue, proposing the adoption of Social Sciences concepts, particularly at gender category, to support more comprehensive and encompassing approaches towards prevention and health assistance of tobacco smoking women. Analyzing the epidemiologic scenario of woman smoking, three tendencies could be identified--pauperization, feminilization and juvenilization--confirming that many of women disease are related to social and gender inequalities. Gender dimension is associated to woman smoking through women's protest pathologies which historically express dissatisfactions and social contradictions experienced by women.

[Cigarette as "companion": a critical gender approach to women's smoking].

This article presents the main results of a study that examined the symbolic and material meanings of women's smoking, adopting a critical and qualitative gender approach. Semi-structured interviews were held with 14 women smokers in different stages of the smoking cessation process. The research locus was a tobacco treatment program located in a public hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

[Relationship between health care professionals and HIV positive women: a gender approach].

This article presents the results of research in 2003 focusing on the relationship between health care professionals from a public clinic and HIV positive women, adopting a gender approach. Ten patients and seven attending professionals were interviewed on the following themes: gender representations; representations of HIV/AIDS in women; and accommodation and resistance strategies to internalized attitudes and values regarding the health professional/patient relationship. According to the results, health professionals attempted to adjust the treatment to the limited resources of both the institution and the patient, endeavoring to offer the most complete care possible.