"SHUT UP AND LISTEN": Feminist Health Care with Out-of-the-Mainstream Adolescent Females

Abstract

Models of women's health care have focused on the needs and issues of adult women and have not included those of adolescent women. This bias is true even for feminist-identified researchers and practitioners. Most health services for young women tend to deal exclusively, or in large measure, with their reproductive health, are planned by adults using an adult health care model and do not approach health care provision from a feminist perspective. In addition, there is a lack of information on the special health needs and issues of out-of-the-mainstream adolescent females such as homeless, immigrant, lesbian/bisexual identified young women. The main purpose of this paper is to describe guiding principals, as well as some of the practical pitfalls and ethical dilemmas in the provision of feminist health care for out-of-the-mainstream adolescent women.