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Module 1.3 intersectionality
1. Women’s Health &
Intersectionality
Examining Race, Class, & Gender
2. Overview
What is the difference between gender &
sex?
What is intersectionality?
What does intersectionality tell us about health
disparities?
What roles do women have in society?
How do these roles affect women’s health?
3. Sex is biological; gender is cultural. Gender norms
refer to societal expectations for male and female
behavior and roles and reflect the relative value of
males and females. They prescribe the division of
labor and responsibilities between males and females
and accord different rights to them. Either
intentionally or unintentionally, they create inequality
between the sexes in power, autonomy, and well-
being, typically to the disadvantage of females (K.
Mason, 1995). Children are socialized into gender-
defined behaviors and attitudes early in life.
4. Sex, Gender & Health
Biological sex
Reproduction
Disease
Power imbalance
Access to care
Access to harm
Roles
Familial
Reproductive
5. Intersectionality
Forms or markers of oppression cannot,
in practice, be separated from one
another
A person’s social location is determined
by multiple factors that are intertwined
The effect of these factors on health are
altered when multiplied
7. Infant Mortality Rates, Mothers Aged 20
Years and Older, 1995
Maternal White Black Black-to-
Education White Ratio
>12 years 9.9 17.3 1.74
12 years 6.5 14.8 2.28
13-15 years 5.1 12.3 2.41
16 years or 4.2 11.4 2.71
more
Source: Pamuk and others (1998)
8. Intersectional Paradox
“Highest SES group of African American
women has equivalent or higher rates of
infant mortality, low birthweight,
hypertension, and excess weight then the
lowest SES group of white women”
-Jackson & Williams, 2006
9. How Do Women’s Roles Affect
Women’s Health?
Woman as Sexual Partner
Body Image
Pregnancy
STIs
Woman as Mother
Pregnancy
Childbirth
Stress
Editor's Notes
In this lecture we are going to extend the discussion to look more specifically at differences between sex and gender and to look at how different social factors, like race, class and gender, intersect and affect women’s lives
This lecture will help set the stage for discussions we will be having throughout the course. These discussions include using an intersectional approach to study women’s health, specifically what intersectionality means and what it can tell us about health disparities, and what women’s roles are in society and how these roles affect their health.
I want to take a moment and do a close reading of this passage as it makes an important point that will use throughout the course. Sex is biological; gender is cultural. That is a basic definition of the difference between sex and gender. And stating that gender is cultural is what we mean when we say that gender is socially constructed. We create it within our cultures and within society; we create and recreate it daily and over the ages. Gender norms refer to the societal expectations for male and female behavior and roles and reflect the relative value of males and females. The first half of this sentence is a little easier to take than the second half. Most of us are comfortable with having different expectations of behavior and different roles for men and women. We may not want those roles to be too rigid but we are generally not uncomfortable with their existence. It gets trickier when we realize that these behaviors and roles are reflective of how men and women are valued by society. We would like to believe that we are valued the same even if we have different roles but unfortunately this is not the case. They prescribe the division of labor and responsibilities between males and females and accord different rights to them. This sentence continues that same uncomfortable idea but now specifies how the behaviors and role affect the division or labor, again something we might be comfortable with, and give each sex different rights, something we are not comfortable with. Either intentionally or unintentionally, they create inequality between the sexes in power, autonomy, and well-being, typically to the disadvantage of females. This sentence is important because it points out that inequalities can exist even when they we are not trying to create them. Regardless of the intention they do exist and women are more likely to get the short end of the stick. This sentence is also important because it recognizes that men can also be disadvantaged by gender norms and we don’t talk enough about how gender affects men negatively. Children are socialized into gender-defined behaviors and attitudes early in life. This sentence is important because people will often point to young children and use differences in their behaviors to make the claim that gender norms are somehow biological or genetic. It is important to realize that even in infancy, children are being socialized into gendered expectations.
So what does sex and gender have to do with health? The answer is a lot. Certainly there are biological sex differences that differentiate issues in women’s health from men’s health. Due to biology, women bare the brunt of reproductive health issues (although men do have their own reproductive issues and this often gets forgotten when it shouldn’t) and there are certain diseases, such as cervical and ovarian cancer, that will only occur in women or other diseases, such as breast cancer, that is predominately found in women due to biological differences. However the power imbalance that comes from these expectations of gender norms affect health through changing women’s access to care and their access to harm. In addition, women’s social roles—such as their roles within families as wife, mother, sister, daughter and their reproductive roles—affect their health and their experience of well-being.
Intersectionality is a term that is used to represent how the forms, or markers, of oppression cannot be separated from one another. In other words, if there are inequalities associated with being a woman and there are inequalities associated with being Black, a Black woman cannot separate these two forms of oppression and we need to understand the experience of women in terms of the social locations that they occupy. In the case I just mention we cannot understand the issue from the perspective of a woman who is Black are a Black person who is a woman but we must try to understand the experiences of a Black woman as a separate social location. When we do examine these intersectional social locations, we see how the negative effects are multiplied.
This is a simplistic diagram to show the overlapping areas and how individuals may live in different social locations. This gets much more complicated as we add other factors such as sexual orientation or age.
This table represents an example of how looking at intersectionality can increase our understanding of health for Black women. This chart is examining the infant mortality rates of adult women by both race and class. Here the level of education the woman has received is being used to measure class. If you just look at race differences you can see that White women have less infant mortality than Black women at every level of education. If you just look at maternal education, or class, you see that infant mortality goes down as years of education increase for both White and Black women. However if you look at the intersection of class and race you see that the smallest ratio, or the smallest difference between the two races, occurs at the lowest level of education and the greatest difference exists at the highest level. This goes against common sense. If class, or education, was the main factor than we should see the disparity lesson as education increases. In fact you can clearly see that a Black woman at the highest level of education has a greater infant mortality rate than a White woman at the lowest level of education.
This is what we call an intersectional paradox, something that doesn’t make sense unless we try to understand the intersection of race and class, and we also see that it holds true for more than just infant mortality.
We will be examining women’s health issues through an intersectional lens throughout the course. We will also be looking at women’s social roles and how these roles affect women’s health. While women hold many roles in society, in the course we will primarily be looking at women’s role as a sexual partner and as a mother.
