Including Every Woman: The All-Embracing "We" of Our Bodies, Ourselves

As tone and voice editor of the eighth edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS), my task was to read the draft chapters for inclusive language and content, bearing in mind issues such as cultural and ethnic diversity, socioeconomic class, demographic cohorts, religion and belief systems, health traditions, gender and sexual orientation, and disability. Keeping in perspective that it is a gigantic effort to present the gamut of health needs and concerns of ALL women in a single book, I commenced my encounter with the "all-embracing we"—the idea of a "we" that is inclusive—in the personal stories, viewpoints, and health information presented throughout the book. From "Environmental and Occupational Health" to "Abortion," from "Childbirth" to "Midlife and Menopause," my task was to ensure that a variety of voices were represented and that the chapters' language was sensitive to the multiplicity of health issues of women from disparate backgrounds.

Before I could read the draft chapters in the upcoming eighth edition of OBOS for this purpose, it seemed important to learn how the "all-embracing we" had changed over time to determine what would be new and distinct in this edition. The eighth edition of OBOS is the second time that this influential book on women's health includes a tone and voice editor on its team (which included about 500 writers, readers, and editors for this edition). A tone and voice editor was part of the team for the first time during the production of the 1998 edition of OBOS (Whelan and Sanford 2003). The idea of having a tone and voice editor emerged from "the need to bring in diverse viewpoints and voices" and the desire for the "revision/update to include and be shaped by the voices of a wider range of communities" (Whelan and Sanford 2003a, 5).

This report is divided into two main sections. The first section provides a brief review of changes in the "we" from the 1970s to the late 1990s and OBOS's struggle for inclusiveness. The second section describes the issues I faced in dealing with representation of different women through the use of pronouns, the construction of the other, the incorporation of personal experiences, and the presentation of medical information.

Including Every Woman: The Centrality of the "We" and the Struggle for Inclusiveness

The use of the word "we"in OBOS has been a fundamental feature of the book, which has given OBOS an accessible and caring tone and a more inviting and embracing voice (Whelan and Sanford 2003a). In the early 1970s the title of the book underwent an initial transformation from Women and Their Bodies to Women and Our Bodies, then changed to Our Bodies, Ourselves (Kahn 1995). This change in the title suggests a shift toward a more inclusive "we" with women placed at the center of knowledge about their own health and bodies. These initial changes in the title of the book were directly related to the original authors' reflection and discussions about their individual encounters with the medical system, their personal knowledge about their bodies, and their frustrations with health care settings where they were treated in a "condescending, paternalistic, judgmental, and uninformative" way (Norsigian et al. 1999, 35; Norsigian 1998).

The editions of OBOS in the early 1970s remained focused for the most part on a "we" that was composed of young, educated, middle-class, white women: "We are white, our ages range from 24 to 40, most of us are from middle-class backgrounds and have had at least some college education, and some of us have professional degrees. We are white middle-class women, and as such can describe only what life has been for us" (BWHBC 1973, cited in Morgan 2002, 17). Although the original "we" did not directly include women of color, women with disabilities, or older women, for example, throughout the various editions of OBOS the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (hereafter referred to as the Collective) has struggled to reach a more embracing we:

[L]ike many groups initially formed by white women, we have struggled against society...