La salute al femminile. Le disuguaglianze di genere nelle campagne di comunicazione sugli screening oncologici e i vaccini degli ultimi 20 anni

The contribution reflects on changes in public health communication, which we observe through the lens of cancer screening and vaccination campaigns over the past 20 years. On the one hand, public communication is, by definition, a form of communication aimed at the general interest, designed to meet the informational needs of the entire population. On the other hand, it must contend with the necessary personalization of content, the differentiation of target audiences according to the topics addressed, and the segmentation of the citizenry based on the prevalence of specific diseases among certain user groups. But how, then, can the pursuit of communicative effectiveness be reconciled with the risk of generating—or reproducing—health inequalities, which are well-documented in the literature? To what extent, and in what ways, is gender represented and narrated in these two specific areas of health prevention? Beyond providing a detailed discussion of the findings, this study explores the representation of women in the collected materials. This representation is closely tied to the perception of women as individuals to be protected and cared for but also, at times, as vulnerable subjects in need of expert guidance. Furthermore, we analyzed gender differences in the campaigns in relation to language use, visual communication, narrative function, and register. This analysis was also conducted from a longitudinal perspective to examine how the portrayal of women and the communication directed toward them have evolved over the past 20 years.