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Virago Sick of It.
Sick of It ABISBOOK Virago.
308 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2024
39 people are currently reading
418 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 3, 2025
Definitely recommend
August 31, 2025
A must read for women out there especially if the ones that are in positions that can make a change. But also for anyone else in politics and leadership.
A but flabbergasted by the negative ratings and comments from women that either judge the book for being data heavy (did you not read why data is “the new oil”? And how she actually does you and every other Karen a service by providing a start for you?) or by women that jump to the end without reading the middle and judge the author for what she may not have done. I swear if this was written by a man I bet they’d be praising it for its knowledge, but when a woman comes we either don’t believe her (and her value) or we denigrate her. Why on earth do people even read this or where do they get lost along this book?
As a non native English speaker I found the book pretty simplistic and data easy, with a lot of proof to open one’s eye and also give some tools about where to start. So genuinely not sure what the negativity is about.
A but flabbergasted by the negative ratings and comments from women that either judge the book for being data heavy (did you not read why data is “the new oil”? And how she actually does you and every other Karen a service by providing a start for you?) or by women that jump to the end without reading the middle and judge the author for what she may not have done. I swear if this was written by a man I bet they’d be praising it for its knowledge, but when a woman comes we either don’t believe her (and her value) or we denigrate her. Why on earth do people even read this or where do they get lost along this book?
As a non native English speaker I found the book pretty simplistic and data easy, with a lot of proof to open one’s eye and also give some tools about where to start. So genuinely not sure what the negativity is about.
October 15, 2024
Yet another painful evidence of how women health and wellbeing is only of interest if serves someone's political ambitions. And it is never ever about actual health at the end.
Read
October 12, 2024DNF audiobook at 35%. Very fact heavy and much of a cohesive journey. I lost interest very quickly, tried to push through and realised I have better ways to spend my time.
October 2, 2025
I hate that I used my hard earned money on this drivel. I really tried to finish this, but I simply couldn't do it. This book is extremely biased towards woke liberal feminist ideology and falls into the ever so exhaustingly familiar liberal tactic of calling anyone who disagrees with them a bigoted fascist. That's what I'm sick of!!
I am a radical, sex-realist feminist. I believe in abortion rights for women (Sorry, my bad, should say people according to our brain-dead author). This book argues that anti-abortion views are "very rarely" about the issue of abortion itself and is instead all about "colonialism" (fails to mention colonialism of what country to which country and in what century, but probably a safe bet to assume she's not talking about Islam, the largest colonising force on the face of planet in history) and anti-immigration (again, failure to mention of whom to where and when!) as a means to scaremonger and preserve old fashioned views! Absolutely moronic. I don't blame the author - we all have our echo chambers, after all! I blame the publishers. I really enjoyed Virago publishing until now. This is an absolute disappointment from a supposedly feminist publishing house.
I am a radical, sex-realist feminist. I believe in abortion rights for women (Sorry, my bad, should say people according to our brain-dead author). This book argues that anti-abortion views are "very rarely" about the issue of abortion itself and is instead all about "colonialism" (fails to mention colonialism of what country to which country and in what century, but probably a safe bet to assume she's not talking about Islam, the largest colonising force on the face of planet in history) and anti-immigration (again, failure to mention of whom to where and when!) as a means to scaremonger and preserve old fashioned views! Absolutely moronic. I don't blame the author - we all have our echo chambers, after all! I blame the publishers. I really enjoyed Virago publishing until now. This is an absolute disappointment from a supposedly feminist publishing house.
November 8, 2025
This book looks at how women’s health around the world is shaped by politics, power, and inequality. Harman argues that despite decades of progress, women are still dying or suffering from preventable health issues because their well-being is treated as a political tool rather than a basic human right. Through stories from places like Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda, as well as discussions about U.S. foreign policy and global aid, she shows how decisions about women’s health are often made by those with power, money, and influence instead of by the women affected most.
Harman critiques how global health programs often focus on numbers, like lowering maternal mortality rates, while ignoring deeper problems such as access to contraception, reproductive rights, workplace health, and the burden of unpaid care work. She points out that data is often incomplete or selectively used, which makes it easy for governments and donors to claim success while many women remain invisible in the statistics. She also criticizes how foreign aid can sometimes reinforce inequality, since donor countries tend to push their own agendas instead of listening to what local communities actually need.
I found this book to be very readable and provde both the details and the context of the different events described, meaning it was easy to understand for the reader. I did find myself wishing the author shared a bit more of herself in some memoir style insertions throughout though, we get her passion and her research skills and her knowledge but not her motivations (which is of course her decision but would have added to the reading experience alot).
Quotes:
“Using women's health as a tool of soft power is not necessarily a bad thing: it would be great if all the countries in the world gained their standing, recognition and good diplomacy from helping women. But there is a sinister side to this.
Rwanda uses its standing on women's health to 'healthwash' the unseemly, more murderous part of Rwandan politics.”
(on structral adjustment and the world bank policies) “Longer term, these economic reforms did not bring about the promised prosperity and growth. Debt increased. As states competed to attract foreign investment, labour standards decreased. This had a direct impact on women in the labour market because they were seen as cheaper and easier to exploit, as at the time they were perceived as less likely to be members of unions and more likely to have depend-ants needing their wage. A growth in the import of foreign goods saw increases in food imports, which often out-priced domestic farmers and food producers. This again affected women who worked in informal agricultural labour in poor countries and vendors of local produce who struggled to compete with foreign imports. Health services were opened up to foreign competition and investment, and in turn saw cuts in Dublic-sector investment in health and welfare provision. This increased out-of-pocket expenditure for individuals accessing healthcare, and weakened health systems in poor countries as they did not have the funds to sustain them. Public services and welfare went into decline. The private sector did not fill the void, especially not in health and social care. Women did.”
• Global Gag Rule
“The global gag rule was part of a right-wing American political movement that started with its focus on other countries in the world and then built momentum working from the outside in, from foreign to domestic policy. As the global gag rule expanded to cover more institutions and countries in the world, so did the domestic pressure to overturn American women's constitutional right to abortion.”
“The problem is not that women's health is embedded in global politics, but that it is so effective as a political tool. If you want to shift the way foreign aid works, change the domestic policy of another country, get elected or control a population, exploiting women's health will do the job.”
“More than that, the whole fundraising and marketing strategy of major international charities does not rest on men's stories and their willingness to tell them again and again on various platforms: it rests on young women and girls. This works for all international charities, not just health ones.
What is particular about health and medical charities is how they obtain their stories. The issue of eating trauma becomes thornier when questions arise as to who owns these stories, who controls how they are used and where they end up. This is where eating and selling trauma shifts from a white saviour irritant to a serious safeguarding problem for young women and girls.”
“One senior gender expert in women's health told me that international donors are always pushing for the new. They wantto know who the young feminists are and what they are doing. The effectiveness of young women like Malala, Greta and anti-FGM campaigners is based on how they inspire a wider movement built from the ground up. Young people are central to activist movements as they can bring energy to sustain campaigns on all manner of social justice issues. This is why feminists and gender experts working in women's health often refer to young people as having the potential and strength to take issues forward. But when politicians and institutions begin to take an interest in this activism to advance their own interests and agendas, the vampires come out. The celebration of youth activism can be a means to displace older experts who have become politically inconvenient to politicians or international policy-makers. Young women become the end of the SOS! cycle: first you get a woman leader to deal with the problem and when she's set up to fail, you get a gender expert, and when you don't like what the gender expert or older leader is telling you or they burn out from being asked to explain gender for the 1,981st time, you get the youth on side. You make sure you don't give the youth any real power, and then dismiss them once they are not politically convenient.
This is a classic divide-and-rule tactic that diminishes the ex-pertise, knowledge and solidarity of all women in global health.”
“Not getting good gender data is not unique to COVID-19.
It was a full year into the 2014/16 Ebola outbreak before the WHO situation reports disaggregated new infections and deaths by men and women. Non-binary or gender-diverse people did not (and would continue not to) get a look in. After Ebola, some people raised concerns about this, but ultimately the lack of good data on how the emergency was affecting and infecting men and women differently was nowhere in the lessons-learned reports. Good data on gender was an afterthought both during the crisis and when thinking about how to manage future crises better. The same thing happened with COVID-19.”
Harman critiques how global health programs often focus on numbers, like lowering maternal mortality rates, while ignoring deeper problems such as access to contraception, reproductive rights, workplace health, and the burden of unpaid care work. She points out that data is often incomplete or selectively used, which makes it easy for governments and donors to claim success while many women remain invisible in the statistics. She also criticizes how foreign aid can sometimes reinforce inequality, since donor countries tend to push their own agendas instead of listening to what local communities actually need.
I found this book to be very readable and provde both the details and the context of the different events described, meaning it was easy to understand for the reader. I did find myself wishing the author shared a bit more of herself in some memoir style insertions throughout though, we get her passion and her research skills and her knowledge but not her motivations (which is of course her decision but would have added to the reading experience alot).
Quotes:
“Using women's health as a tool of soft power is not necessarily a bad thing: it would be great if all the countries in the world gained their standing, recognition and good diplomacy from helping women. But there is a sinister side to this.
Rwanda uses its standing on women's health to 'healthwash' the unseemly, more murderous part of Rwandan politics.”
(on structral adjustment and the world bank policies) “Longer term, these economic reforms did not bring about the promised prosperity and growth. Debt increased. As states competed to attract foreign investment, labour standards decreased. This had a direct impact on women in the labour market because they were seen as cheaper and easier to exploit, as at the time they were perceived as less likely to be members of unions and more likely to have depend-ants needing their wage. A growth in the import of foreign goods saw increases in food imports, which often out-priced domestic farmers and food producers. This again affected women who worked in informal agricultural labour in poor countries and vendors of local produce who struggled to compete with foreign imports. Health services were opened up to foreign competition and investment, and in turn saw cuts in Dublic-sector investment in health and welfare provision. This increased out-of-pocket expenditure for individuals accessing healthcare, and weakened health systems in poor countries as they did not have the funds to sustain them. Public services and welfare went into decline. The private sector did not fill the void, especially not in health and social care. Women did.”
• Global Gag Rule
“The global gag rule was part of a right-wing American political movement that started with its focus on other countries in the world and then built momentum working from the outside in, from foreign to domestic policy. As the global gag rule expanded to cover more institutions and countries in the world, so did the domestic pressure to overturn American women's constitutional right to abortion.”
“The problem is not that women's health is embedded in global politics, but that it is so effective as a political tool. If you want to shift the way foreign aid works, change the domestic policy of another country, get elected or control a population, exploiting women's health will do the job.”
“More than that, the whole fundraising and marketing strategy of major international charities does not rest on men's stories and their willingness to tell them again and again on various platforms: it rests on young women and girls. This works for all international charities, not just health ones.
What is particular about health and medical charities is how they obtain their stories. The issue of eating trauma becomes thornier when questions arise as to who owns these stories, who controls how they are used and where they end up. This is where eating and selling trauma shifts from a white saviour irritant to a serious safeguarding problem for young women and girls.”
“One senior gender expert in women's health told me that international donors are always pushing for the new. They wantto know who the young feminists are and what they are doing. The effectiveness of young women like Malala, Greta and anti-FGM campaigners is based on how they inspire a wider movement built from the ground up. Young people are central to activist movements as they can bring energy to sustain campaigns on all manner of social justice issues. This is why feminists and gender experts working in women's health often refer to young people as having the potential and strength to take issues forward. But when politicians and institutions begin to take an interest in this activism to advance their own interests and agendas, the vampires come out. The celebration of youth activism can be a means to displace older experts who have become politically inconvenient to politicians or international policy-makers. Young women become the end of the SOS! cycle: first you get a woman leader to deal with the problem and when she's set up to fail, you get a gender expert, and when you don't like what the gender expert or older leader is telling you or they burn out from being asked to explain gender for the 1,981st time, you get the youth on side. You make sure you don't give the youth any real power, and then dismiss them once they are not politically convenient.
This is a classic divide-and-rule tactic that diminishes the ex-pertise, knowledge and solidarity of all women in global health.”
“Not getting good gender data is not unique to COVID-19.
It was a full year into the 2014/16 Ebola outbreak before the WHO situation reports disaggregated new infections and deaths by men and women. Non-binary or gender-diverse people did not (and would continue not to) get a look in. After Ebola, some people raised concerns about this, but ultimately the lack of good data on how the emergency was affecting and infecting men and women differently was nowhere in the lessons-learned reports. Good data on gender was an afterthought both during the crisis and when thinking about how to manage future crises better. The same thing happened with COVID-19.”
August 27, 2024
I thought I'd be fascinated by this book as I have worked in women's health for many years in multiple countries but it was such hard work to read, and so ranting. Yes of course there are huge injustices and of course the burden falls on women but although she promises "smart solutions on how to fix the crisis through activism and political work" her ideas are trite and underwhelming.
I was also totally bemused by her attack on the brave people who work for MSF.
I wasn't convinced she'd spent much time at the real "battlefront" and doubt she's ever risked her life for her cause.
I'm not sure who this book is for but I didn't manage to get very far with it.
I was also totally bemused by her attack on the brave people who work for MSF.
I wasn't convinced she'd spent much time at the real "battlefront" and doubt she's ever risked her life for her cause.
I'm not sure who this book is for but I didn't manage to get very far with it.
December 30, 2024
so well researched and you can tell Harman knows what shes talking about at every stage of this book. each chapter had a clear purpose however the conclusion was a slight let down and did not incorporate the earlier chapters as well as it should have as a conclusion to the whole book.
January 10, 2026
je consomme de plus en plus de non-fiction féministes, et je pense que Sick of It est l'un des ouvrages indispensables à lire pour quiconque souhaitant comprendre exactement ce que ça implique d'être une femme et de voir sa santé être dénigrée, manipulée, réduite à un simple instrument marketing.
ce livre m'a révoltée. l'autrice a apporté des exemples concrets de femmes et de situations, que ce soit dans des endroits lointains (les épidémies d'Ebola en Afrique) ou bien plus proches (le traitement des personnels soignants durant le Covid en Angleterre), qui montrent encore une fois que peu importe ce que l'on fait, on sera toujours considérés comme des sous-humains.
les femmes sont des soignantes. des accompagnatrices. des aidantes. elles sont les piliers de nombreuses communautés, font tourner les familles, les associations, les hôpitaux. et qu'ont-elles en retour ? du mépris et de la maltraitance. que ce soit dans le cercle privé ou dans le cercle professionnel, la femme est toujours plus à risque d'une aggression, aussi bien par les personnes qu'elle assiste que par ses collègues/parents et sa hiérarchie.
je vois que ce livre n'a que très peu d'avis sur Goodreads. j'espère que cela changera, car plus de personnes devraient le lire et absorber la réalité qu'il présente.
ce livre m'a révoltée. l'autrice a apporté des exemples concrets de femmes et de situations, que ce soit dans des endroits lointains (les épidémies d'Ebola en Afrique) ou bien plus proches (le traitement des personnels soignants durant le Covid en Angleterre), qui montrent encore une fois que peu importe ce que l'on fait, on sera toujours considérés comme des sous-humains.
les femmes sont des soignantes. des accompagnatrices. des aidantes. elles sont les piliers de nombreuses communautés, font tourner les familles, les associations, les hôpitaux. et qu'ont-elles en retour ? du mépris et de la maltraitance. que ce soit dans le cercle privé ou dans le cercle professionnel, la femme est toujours plus à risque d'une aggression, aussi bien par les personnes qu'elle assiste que par ses collègues/parents et sa hiérarchie.
je vois que ce livre n'a que très peu d'avis sur Goodreads. j'espère que cela changera, car plus de personnes devraient le lire et absorber la réalité qu'il présente.
October 3, 2025
Sick of it - The Global Fight for Women‘s Health
by
Sophie Harman
Globally speaking, we are not really enacting meaningful change at a rate that we could and should, when it comes to women‘s health. Governments and institutions will include but then duly ignore women experts in their committees. But they‘re represented, they might say. Large organizations will much rather cover up sexual abuse incidences for the greater good, than actually do something to protect women and children, like the UN did in Congo during the Ebola outbreak. Even when health care is advanced, it can be simply a tool to deflect from larger and sensitive political and societal issues, as the government of Rwanda has done since the genocide in 1994.
The bottom line is that we are not doing enough. We could do more and could do it more effectively. Women‘s health needs to be more than a catchy slogan before an upcoming election or a strategy to healthwash bad policies. Violence against frontline health care workers, many of whom are women, needs to be countered with more than just platitudes of “zero tolerance” in official statements.
We can start by listening to people who‘ve experienced it. And then we should talk about it. Be interested. Do more listening. And maybe read a book about it.
by
Sophie Harman
Globally speaking, we are not really enacting meaningful change at a rate that we could and should, when it comes to women‘s health. Governments and institutions will include but then duly ignore women experts in their committees. But they‘re represented, they might say. Large organizations will much rather cover up sexual abuse incidences for the greater good, than actually do something to protect women and children, like the UN did in Congo during the Ebola outbreak. Even when health care is advanced, it can be simply a tool to deflect from larger and sensitive political and societal issues, as the government of Rwanda has done since the genocide in 1994.
The bottom line is that we are not doing enough. We could do more and could do it more effectively. Women‘s health needs to be more than a catchy slogan before an upcoming election or a strategy to healthwash bad policies. Violence against frontline health care workers, many of whom are women, needs to be countered with more than just platitudes of “zero tolerance” in official statements.
We can start by listening to people who‘ve experienced it. And then we should talk about it. Be interested. Do more listening. And maybe read a book about it.
August 7, 2024
I enjoyed this book - I listened to it via audiobook and so some parts I think I missed or didn’t register as fully. Harman talks about the relationship between politics and women’s health.
I think Harman raised excellent points about corruption in aid charities and government misconduct in relation to women’s health. I was personally appalled by some of the stories she shared surrounding images of young, impoverished women circulating without their consent. I also found her closing reflections on abortion very interesting.
Would recommend.
I think Harman raised excellent points about corruption in aid charities and government misconduct in relation to women’s health. I was personally appalled by some of the stories she shared surrounding images of young, impoverished women circulating without their consent. I also found her closing reflections on abortion very interesting.
Would recommend.
October 13, 2025
Brilliant read from a socio-political, feminist and public health standpoint.
Not your traditional women’s health book about diminishing if the female experience in healthcare and that women’s bodies do not always display health and illness in the same way as men’s (important as those issues are). This is about the literal weaponisation if women’s health, healthwashing, barriers to true equality, fantastic insights on intersectionality, the issues facing the female workforce and the lack of gender informed policy at all levels.
Highly recommend.
Not your traditional women’s health book about diminishing if the female experience in healthcare and that women’s bodies do not always display health and illness in the same way as men’s (important as those issues are). This is about the literal weaponisation if women’s health, healthwashing, barriers to true equality, fantastic insights on intersectionality, the issues facing the female workforce and the lack of gender informed policy at all levels.
Highly recommend.
October 6, 2024
I don't think I've ever fully realised that abortion bans actually leads to more abortions. However, it is kind of obvious when discussed in this book. In a roundabout way, you could argue that supporting abortion is actually more pro-life than the alternative.
I didn't quite realise how political this book was when I picked it up in the library, and it could be heavy going in places, but I thought that Sophie Harman's discussion of women's health was very intelligent and enlightening.
I didn't quite realise how political this book was when I picked it up in the library, and it could be heavy going in places, but I thought that Sophie Harman's discussion of women's health was very intelligent and enlightening.
September 23, 2025
I have definitely learned a lot of interesting facts from this book and I would recommend it.
My problem with the book is mostly that it seems to have a mostly female audience in mind - more specifically, a female audience who has experienced a lot of sexism at work - which I think is counterproductive to the aim of this book and leads to some rambling.
My problem with the book is mostly that it seems to have a mostly female audience in mind - more specifically, a female audience who has experienced a lot of sexism at work - which I think is counterproductive to the aim of this book and leads to some rambling.
November 15, 2025
J’avoue que je l’ai lu pcq c’est ma prof jvoulais l’impressionner un peu, par contre hyper surprise. J’ai beaucoup appris.
C’est incisif et j’en retiens que la santé des femmes est souvent instrumentalisée comme un outil de soft power.
Ça reste une lecture exigeante pcq il faut la tenir mais bon c’est intéressant (surtout pour les filles).
C’est incisif et j’en retiens que la santé des femmes est souvent instrumentalisée comme un outil de soft power.
Ça reste une lecture exigeante pcq il faut la tenir mais bon c’est intéressant (surtout pour les filles).
August 27, 2024
Gosh! Where to start? I certainly didn't anywhere near finish it. This self aggrandising and ranting book was such heavy-going, and so I skipped to the final chapter, but couldn't see how this would help anyone, let alone her students.
September 19, 2025
I knew about some of these issues already, but this book really showed me the scale of the problem and how it all fits into a bigger geopolitical context. Eye-opening and honestly pretty shocking at times. The horror stories about exploitative charities and NGOs are tough to read, but so important.
July 21, 2024
Using this as a placeholder until this book is properly added to Goodreads.
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