Self care and illness experience. Contributions to the transit of women with breast cancer from a gender perspective in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Health care constitutes an inescapable dimension of all experience of illness. From philosophy, Michel Foucault has investigated this notion in relation to otherness, highlighting the subjective nature of links as a support of care, expressed as ethics. The relational mood is thus consistent with a gender perspective that seeks to understand and question the traditional social, cultural and economic allocation of care responsibilities attributed primarily to women.
Based on a study on the experience of women with breast cancer, the dimension of care is revisited, considering in this gendered experience the problem of alterity and how it participates in the care dynamics of the subject subjects. In methodological terms, an analysis of narratives is made from the perspective of biographical spaces.
Among the results, it can be highlighted that self-care should not be attributed to the same illness condition or taken for granted in women’s narratives. It is used as a political instance, in which recognition and empowerment are essential elements for its exercise. This aspect calls for discussing the relevant role of care as an expression of autonomy and equity in health. It is concluded that caring for oneself is an expression of certain inequalities that still persist, in more complex frameworks, in which the place of affectivity and family relationships participate in an inseparable way.