Implications of structure and agency for health and wellbeing in our ecologically constrained world: A focus on prospects for gender equity

Individual choice and freedom are repeatedly invoked in contemporary policy debates, especially health policy debates about health insurance coverage and risk behaviors. The idea of making the “right” choice with regards to health and wellbeing has been fortified by the neoliberal discourses of self-reliance, personal autonomy, and responsibility. The neoliberal view, stemming from John Stuart Mill’s conceptualization of individual freedom in opposition to unlimited state control (Mill 1859), holds that success, good health, and favorable educational outcomes are largely tied to individual effort. Correspondingly, so too is failure—including failure of health.