Susan Sherwin, "Gender, Race, and Class in the 
Delivery of Health Care," in May, Applied Ethics, 
pp. 643-652.

	Sherwin argues that women receive less health 
care to meet their needs than men, and minority 
women receive the least of all.
Women and the poor need the greatest amount of 
health care, but these groups receive the least. 
Poverty increases the need for health care, and women 
are disproportionately represented among the poor.
	Medicine is organized around a hierarchical 
structure that continues a tradition of male 
domination. Over eighty percent of health care 
workers are women, but men hold almost all 
positions of authority. More than eighty percent of 
physicians in the U.S. are male as of 1986, and the 
females in the profession tend to engage in family 
practice rather than the more influential specialties.
	Feminist perspectives can help to bring about a 
change in these structures. Rather than focus on 
physician-directed cure, medicine should provide 
greater access to health information so that patients 
may become participants in their own health 
concerns. The hierarchy tends to foster 
dependence, but a challenge to the hierarchy can 
bring about greater democratization for 
participants in the health care system.