Our Commitment to Social Justice

Breast Cancer Action recognizes that the breast cancer epidemic is a social justice issue. Breast cancer is a widespread health crisis that predominantly effects women in a male-dominated and profit-driven society, and addressing and ending the breast cancer epidemic requires profound changes at every level of our society.

In mainstream U.S. culture, breasts are linked to femininity, sexuality, and attractiveness. As a result, breast cancer is a highly sexualized and gendered disease. As a health justice organization with roots in the women’s health movement, we challenge the narrow definitions of femininity, womanhood, and sexuality that mainstream narratives about breast cancer impose on people at risk of and living with the disease. We recognize and honor the many ways people express their gender identity, including outside of the either/or of man/woman. We work to challenge mainstream assumptions about gender and sexuality as it relates to breast cancer risk, diagnosis, and treatment in order to make room for people of all gender identities in the breast cancer movement.

In our work for health justice, we strive to practice principled allyship by using the power and privilege we hold as an organization to build solidarity with communities who currently and/or traditionally have had less access to power, information, and resources.

The current breast cancer epidemic impacts communities unequally and leads to unacceptable differences in who develops breast cancer and when it develops, who gets high quality and timely treatment, and who dies from breast cancer. In order to address and end the breast cancer epidemic, we must tackle the root causes of these health inequalities, which are the result of a complex interplay of culture, power, economics, racism, and sexism.

Achieving health justice requires that each of us be free from oppressions that prevent all of us from living healthy lives in healthy communities. We believe that no single injustice can be effectively addressed in isolation, and we recognize that injustices in our society reinforce each other in many ways and at many levels.

For more information, please see our factsheet:

Disparities in Breast Cancer: Through the Breast Cancer Continuum 

View our webinars and listen to our podcasts on this issue:

Webinar: Inequities in Breast Cancer: Race and Place Matter
Webinar: Reducing Inequities in Breast Cancer: Why Experience Matters
Webinar: At Cancer’s Margins: Sexual and Gender Marginality in Cancer Health and Experiences of Care
Podcast: Addressing Disparities: Screening vs. Systemic Change