Women—An Open Access Journal

It is time for a new comprehensive journal about women. This journal will investigate many themes important to women and the many roles that women occupy across disciplines, across world regions, across socio-economic boundaries, ethnicities, political and spiritual beliefs. We start off with special issue of women and health, specifically women with psychosis. Psychosis affects women and men, but its gendered expression is relatively rarely explored in the medical literature. It is an important topic because psychosis emerges, somewhat mysteriously, out of neuronal misfirings and neurochemical disturbances in the brain. It is thought that there are inborn genetic predispositions to such disruption of cerebral order but that a multitude of genes and environmental exposures are needed before the symptoms of psychosis are expressed. In fact, most illnesses show a feminine and a masculine presentation. Many aspects of gendered health, as well as the consequences of their lack of recognition will be explored in these pages.

Women occupy many roles and they, too, will be examined. There is a tendency to portray women either as heroines or as victims, but most women do not fit into these categories. Most women, whatever their personal circumstances, lead lives of quiet industry and devotion to the people and the causes that they find meaningful. Whether in families or in the marketplace or in the entertainment industry, in politics, in finance, in sports, they contribute to the richness of our world. The particularities of being women will be analyzed in this new journal.