Self-rated health and barriers to healthcare in Ukraine: The pivotal role of gender and its intersections

The ongoing health crisis in the Ukraine has persisted for 48 years with a clear division of gender-based outcomes as seen in the decline of male life expectancy and stagnation of female longevity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in self-rated health and system barriers to health care applicable to gender and its intersections because of the differing negative health outcomes for men and women. Intersectionality theory provides an analytic framework for interpreting our results. Utilizing a nationwide sample of the Ukrainian population (N = 1908), we found that low socioeconomic status (SES) women rate their health worse than men generally and any other socioeconomic group. Yet women also face the greatest barriers to health care until older ages when the ailments of men cause them to likewise face the obstacles. In reviewing the barrier to health care scale, one barrier—that of health care services being too expensive—dominated the responses with some 52.5 percent of the sample reporting it. Consequently, the greatest problem in Ukraine with respect to health reform reported by the population is the out-of-pocket costs for care in a system that is officially free. These costs, constituting some 40 percent of all national health expenditures, affect women and the aged the most.     

Justice System Bias Perceptions of the Dually Marginalized: Observations from a Sample of Women Ex-offenders

Social constructions of race, gender, and class are known to shape stereotypes that condition interaction and behavior across various contexts, including the criminal justice system. From an intersectional framework emphasizing dual marginalization, this study relates in-depth interviews with women ex-offenders regarding their justice system experiences to explore perceived race and gender themed discrimination. Findings of reported pejorative language and degrading behavior reaffirm a well-documented generalized assumption by women of color that disparate treatment is normative. Discussion centers on how these views are detrimental to rehabilitation enrollment, related implications for offender programming objectives, and the utility of intersectionality theory for analyzing related justice topics.     

Åkesson at Almedalen: Intersectional Tensions and Normalization of Populist Radical Right Discourse in Sweden

This study analyses the populist radical right discourse of the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD), examining how Jimmie Åkesson, the SD chairperson, conceptualized gendered social positions in the folkhem ([Swedish] people’s home) in his annual speeches in Almedalen, since the SD entered the Swedish Parliament in 2010 to date. Attention is being paid to whose voices are allowed to come forth and in which manner this is done, and to how inequalities intersecting gender and ethnicity are explained and reproduced, as means to normalize populist radical right discourse in Sweden. Theoretically, the study rests on the conceptualization of the populist radical right as a thin-centred ideology, which is contingently adapted to national politics, to which it ads “intersectionality from above” as a specific analytical perspective. The discourse-historical approach (DHA) provides the methodological tools for the analysis and facilitates its contextual positioning. The article contributes analytically to the field, shedding light on how, in the context of populist radical right discourse, welfare chauvinist appeals are employed formally to acknowledge the importance of gender equality in Sweden, and are used as a device to contour two antithetic entities: the supposedly gender-equal Swedish ethnic majority as the opposite of the allegedly deeply patriarchal migrant Other. The article also contributes empirically to the study of the populist radical right in Sweden. It provides a more nuanced picture of the party’s ideological transformations in what is envisaged to be their ideological normalization—from fringe nationalism (antidemocratic national socialism) and outright racism to welfare chauvinism and cultural racism (Islamophobic exclusionary nationalism) in conservative clothing.     

Judging the Other: The Intersection of Race,Gender, and Class in Family Court

This critical ethnographic study of family court child maltreatment proceedings describes and illuminates the ways in which racial, gender, and class disadvantages can manifest on the ground as judges, attorneys, social service workers, and parents—joined often by gender but split by race and class—adjudicate cases. The findings suggest that intersectionality worked in ways that exponentially marginalized poor mothers of color in the courtroom. They were marginalized both through the rules of the adversarial process (which silenced their voices) and through the construction of narratives (which emphasized individual weakness) over structural obstacles as well as personal irresponsibility over expressions of maternal care and concern. Standard due process courtroom practices also communicated bias or social exclusion, especially in a courtroom split by race and class.     

The Role of Ethnicity in a Local Drug Dealer Network

This article analyses the role of ethnicity in a heroin dealer and consumer network of young men of Chilean descent in Norrköping, Sweden. At the end of the 1990s the young men became involved in the network through contact with a large‐scale dealer who was also of Chilean descent. They worked as street dealers for the top dealer; many of them also began using heroin and eventually developed an addiction. Through over 100 qualitative interviews with 17 of these young men, the article examines identity construction and the competencies they developed on the street that facilitated their eventual work as dealers, as well as the social relations and contacts within the dealer network that played a role in their becoming dealers and users. The findings reveal that due to their perceived experience of being subordinated in society, they became involved in heroin as a means of gaining self‐respect, dignity, and wealth. Arriving at a view of ethnicity as something that is constructed rather than fixed and intrinsic, the findings point to how ethnicity, through the young men's development of and participation in the street culture, merges with aspects of identity including social class and gender, as well as with aspects of ethnicities from other parts of the world. On the whole, the findings suggest that ethnicity as a concept of analysis within drug cultures is less fruitful when separated from other aspects of identity, such as social class and gender.     

“The River Told Me”: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the spiritual and political journey of Berta Cáceres (1973-2016), a fierce Lenca woman leader from Honduras who died in defense of sacred indigenous rivers, the essay aims to rethink the frame of intersectionality that is axiomatic in feminist theorizing and activism. Against the backdrop of the January 2017 Women’s March in the USA, I interrogate inclusionary accounts that equate intersectionality with a pre-existing unity among women that leaves power differentials intact. I recover the intersection as an index of invisibility and violence by drawing on the intimate connections that Berta foregrounded between multiple structures of domination. However, I argue that attending to the relational histories and geographies of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, is insufficient for imagining more just futures that are hospitable to subaltern horizons. Feminist praxis must also interrogate the Western liberal conceptions of agency and human-nature relations that undergird its intersectional analysis. Through an exploration of the indigenous cosmovisions and transnational grassroots solidarity that coalesce under Berta’s name, I point to the importance of cultivating a disposition to listening to incommensurable worlds where rivers tell stories and call upon us. This is an ecofeminist vision capable of rooting intersectional analysis within decolonizing relations and alternatives.     

The Gendered and Racialised Division in the Korean Labour Market: The Case of Migrant Workers in the Catering Sector

Based on the empirical analysis of migrant women employed in the catering sector, this paper examines the gendered and racialised division in the Korean labour market. Given limited labour protection and the flexibilisation of the migrant workforce in the labour market, South Korea has been able to reduce possible economic and social costs and, at the same time, enjoy the benefits of the significant economic contribution of migrant workers. By looking at gender relations and racial discrimination in the catering sector, and inconsistent government policies, this paper underlines that migrant women are marginalised in the labour market owing to their ‘multiple vulnerability’ as women, migrants and undocumented workers.

The Voice of Young People

No abstract available for this article.