PERSON
Susan Sherwin
1947–
Philosophy · Feminist ethics · Bioethics
Canadian philosopher whose feminist scholarship in health ethics challenged dominant approaches to autonomy, patienthood, reproduction, power, and oppression and helped define feminist bioethics.
At a Glance
- Primary fields
- Philosophy; Feminist ethics; Bioethics
- Intellectual streams
- Feminist bioethics
- Modes of contribution
- Conceptual / theoretical; Critical / corrective; Pedagogical
01 / LIFE & CONTEXT
As bioethics grew alongside second-wave feminist philosophy, Susan Sherwin asked how gender and power were being left out of its accounts of choice. Trained at York and Stanford, with postdoctoral work on medicine's moral problems at Case Western Reserve, she joined Dalhousie University in 1974. Her academic career brought feminist philosophical analysis into health-care ethics.
02 / KEY CONTRIBUTIONS
No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care (1992) challenged the picture of a patient as an isolated decision-maker. Sherwin examined autonomy, abortion, reproductive technologies, and clinical relationships in light of dependence, oppression, and unequal power. Decisions in health care, on this view, cannot be understood apart from the relationships and institutions that shape what choices are available.
03 / HISTORICAL ROLE
Feminist bioethics did more than add women's experiences to an established agenda. Sherwin's work questioned the field's underlying account of agency, opening familiar clinical problems to sustained analysis of social conditions and institutional power.