Gender and health inequalities: intersections with other relevant axes of oppression

نویسندگان

  • Carmen Vives-Cases
  • Malin Eriksson
  • Isabel Goicolea
  • Ann Öhman
چکیده

Gender and health inequalities: intersections with other relevant axes of oppression T he risk of disease, disability, and mortality as well as access to health services are unfairly distributed among the population, with certain groups bearing an unequally larger burden of ill health and poorer access to care due to gender, sexual identity/orientation, ethnic background, or class. According to the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), these health inequalities emanate from socioeconomic and political factors (governance, cultural values, macroeconomic policies), which generate a set of socioeconomic positions in society according to which populations are stratified based on gender, ethnicity, education, income, or other factors. These societal inequalities influence people's material and psychosocial circumstances as well as behavioral and biological factors, which in turn impact on health inequalities (1). Tackling gender, race/ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities in society is thus recognized as the most powerful action to cope with unequal health risks distribution, and social innovations focusing on these 'root causes' are needed in order to prevent and stop endemic social inequalities and social exclusion in health within low-income as well as high-income countries (2). Increasing existing knowledge and making visible the health status of the most vulnerable and invisible groups are critical in order to contribute to this imperative challenge. Gendered power relations have been identified among the most influential social determinants of health inequalities due to their damaging effects on women's and men's health at different levels over their lifetime (3). Last year, Global Health Action presented for the first time a call for articles on Gender and Health aimed to include a variety of empirical and theoretical perspectives, among them sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence, ageing and gender, health systems, climate change, and globalization; all with respect to gender. A total of 19 articles were published and the closing editorial for that special issue, entitled 'Gender and health Á aspects of importance for understanding health and illness in the world', pointed out the most prevalent topics and also hinted at gaps and lacking perspectives (4). One of the identified gaps was the lack of available studies tackling the complex interaction between gender and other markers of inequalities in understanding and targeting health inequalities. The complex nature of these interactions usually limits our knowledge about gender and social inequalities in health. As has been introduced in different theoretical frameworks , notably feminist theory and social …

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عنوان ژورنال:

دوره 8  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2015