SOSC 3169 Exam Prep

Messing and Stellerman: Feminist political economy, intersectional analysis,

gender inequality
Paragraph #1
What is the article about?
 number of researchers have pointed out that less is known about occupational
determinants of health in women than in men.
 The authors examine inventories of ongoing Canadian research and of recent
scientific publications in order to identify trends of Women Occupational Health.

 Consult 4 databases----Psychinfo, Medline and Ergonomic Abstract, sociological

abstract, of 76% 46 articles were on women.

 Observed that women have been the subject of relatively few investigations of
occupational health in the natural or biomedical sciences and that studies of WOH
have concentrated on the health care professions and on psychosocial stressors,
with a deficit in toxicological and physiological studies.

 ‘sex’’ as ‘‘the classification of living things generally as either male or female,

according to their reproductive organs and functions assigned by the chromosomal
complement’’

 and ‘‘gender’’ as ‘‘a person’s self-representation as male or female, or how that

person is responded to by social institutions on the basis of the individual’s gender
presentation’’ ‘‘sex’’ and ‘‘gender’’ are hard to disentangle and also multilayered
concepts.

 Public Health: ‘‘sex’’ might be thought to determine genetically-based sensitivity to

health determinants and ‘‘gender’’ to express some social forces that could influence
exposure and responses to health determinants.
Gender Inequality and Occupational Health, Gender inequalities in health may result
from the poorer working and living conditions of female workers

Quebec IRST Research

- However, among women’s top professions, there are serious health risks (For
example, many food servers lift heavy objects, follow exacting work schedules, and
face prolonged standing, and other risks.

Sales clerks and (in North America) cashiers and tellers also suffer from prolonged
standing. Office workers are exposed to various ergonomic constraints. These
occupations are not, however, found in the sectors given high priority for
intervention and research in, even within the high-priority areas, women’s
professions and sectors receive less attention.

Secretaries frequently experience bone and muscular weakness and pain. There are
also risks for blood clots and body fat gain.

Intersectional Analysis: Sex and Gender and other factors

- Male–female comparison model of outcomes are often made with no reference to the
many exposure parameters that are associated with gender, leaving the impression that
female sex alone makes women more (or less) vulnerable to various occupational health
outcomes such as accidents, sick building syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, and stress.
- sex and gender are not easy to unravel, given the multiple interactions between genes and
environment in producing human health. Body fat/muscle ratios, e.g., are determined not only
(or even primarily) by sex hormones, but by nutritional practices that are influenced by
socialization of males and females in relation to the constantly changing and culturedependent
social demands for preferred body types for their respective sex.

- In addition, the majority of studies examined did not consider explanations other than exposure
differences, such as design of the workstation in relation to anthropometric measurements,
domestic workload, and reporting differences.
- lack of study focusing on workplace chemical exposures, authors made the decision to
investigate mercury toxicity in chloralkali plants.
- biomedical sciences: failure to identify the sex of the sample; exclusion of women; failure to
consider sex at all in a mixed sample. The one study that sought to take sex into account in a
thoughtful way used a correction factor that, while published in a peerreviewed journal and
cited in other studies, appears to be arbitrary.
Neoliberal Policies and Gender: Macro policies passed onto society implicating a gender
order in which
Conclusion: More research on Women/gender and occupational health is required in
biomedical research field. sex/gender and occupational health need to pay even more attention than is
usual to the possible social and physiological mechanisms to make better hypothesis, avoid policy errors and
avoid NOT making hypothesis which shows that one sex is not prejudice over other.

- The biological distinctions between biological sex must also be recognized from an equity
perspective. This prohibits the outcomes from being improperly utilized to promote bias and
unfair occupational opportunities.

Hankivisty Et Al. ----- Intersectional Analysis and Women’s Health Research

What is it about?
research on women tends to essentialize the category of women (that is, assumes that all
women, regardless of age, cultural background, geographical location, socioeconomic
status, religion, sexual orientation and other categories of difference, share exactly the
same experiences, views, and priorities), and further, gives too much primacy to gender
over other key determinants and does not adequately address the interactions among all
determinants
Although Canada has made strides in women’s health advancements, there is a lack of inclusion
for vulnerable women like Aboriginal women, lesbians, or women with disabilities.
Intersectionality Research:
Looks at range of factors causing overlapping systems of discrimination.
Because intersectionality recognizes constructs of social inequality, it is an effective tool for examining
how power and power relations are maintained and reproduced.

Intersection Methodology:
holds the promise of opening new intellectual spaces for knowledge and research
production[40] and has the potential to lead to both theoretical and methodological innovation
intersectionality approach, and one which is a common theme in the above research, is that it
involves the creation of coalitions and strategic alliances to alleviate poverty, social exclusion,
marginalization, and subordination. Research teams were engaged in projects that were for,
rather than about, women

Gender Analysis in Health Research:

Must include sex, class, race and other disadvantages axes and look at interactions among
them.
Analysis is limited for political or ideological reasons so it limits comparison of men and
women producing binary data.
yet research processes such as the establishing of priorities, areas of investigation, and approaches to
research, are typically controlled by a privileged group of individuals (both men and women)

Because political agendas are often set by subpopulations within a constituency that have relatively
more privilege and therefore more status and sometimes, resources, other subgroups may experience
secondary marginalization in which their interests are not addressed by the organizations or movements
purporting to serve them (pe

Conclusion:
intersects with other identities, contributing to unique experiences of oppression and privilege.
Intersectionality has the potential to transform mainstream women’s health research and
policy. At the most general level, as Weber[53] argues, intersectionality is concerned with
“building broader understandings of social inequality and health disparities.

Intersectionality therefore directs attention to how claims about women’s health

often produce hegemonic generalizations Women’s health revolves around white, middle-
class, western women who do not make up the majority in ‘women

more methodological development is needed so that research design can reflect

innovative thinking about identity, equity, and power.
more work is also required to develop effective ways to use quantitative, qualitative, and/or
mixed methods to transcend singular categories of social identity inclusion, exclusion, health
inequalities are better addressed.

Social Determinants of Health: Benoit and Colleagues

Looking at social factors that impact health of sex workers.
Low-prestige and discrimination on a diverse community of sex workers was compared to hairstylists
and food and beverage servers, all of whom had ‘emotional labour’ be a large part of their job.
It was found that of the 3 occupations, sex workers faced the most discrimination and experienced
difficulty in accessing the health care they needed.

Neoliberal limitation to Accessing Health Services: Brotman and Colleagues

he health and social service needs of lesbian and gay seniors was researched along with their
experiences in accessing long-term care services that they needed

Lesbian seniors meant focusing on building connections between identity, social location, and multiple
forms of discrimination in health. o Lesbian and gay seniors experienced marginalization and structural
or systematic discrimination.

Neoliberal reforms lead to deep changes in healthcare systems around the world, on
account of their emphasis on free market rather than the right to health
Macro Level Policies: Policies directly or indirectly targeting healthcare, affecting the entire
population, including disabled people; and b) Policies affecting socioeconomic determinants,
directly or indirectly targeting disabled people, and indirectly impacting access to healthcare

Gorry-Retirement and utilization of Healthcare Resources

What is it about?
this paper studies the effect of retirement on the health and well‐being of individuals and
on their health care utilization, with the latter providing a direct assessment of the impact
of retirement on public health care expenditures.
if retirement worsens health and generates increased health care utilization, then policies
that delay retirement may further improve Medicare's finances and make individuals
better off.
Alternately, if retirement improves health, then policies that promote delayed retirement
shore up the fiscal budget may have hidden fiscal costs and negatively impact individual
Method: Biennal survey HRS
Utilized panel data from the Health and Retirement Study to investigate the impact of
retirement on physical and mental health, life satisfaction, and health care utilization.
It is important to define retirement carefully for our analysis. We begin by selecting a sample of
individuals who report at least 20 years of work experience in the wave in which their cohort
first entered the survey.
Findings:
The finding is also consistent with Johnston and Lee's (2009) finding that retirement improves
mental health as measured by the responses to the general health questionnaire. Our finding
extends these previous findings by showing the evolution of this improvement both in the short
and in the long run.
Retirement has a much larger impact on life satisfaction. Retirement increases agreement with the first
three life satisfaction statements by around half a standard deviation and increases agreement with the
last two statements by over a fifth of a standard deviation

his finding is interesting as the literature on life satisfaction often shows that people return to a set point
of well‐being or adapt after life changing events, and Horner (2014) suggests that the effects of
retirement on subjective well‐being fade. Our results, however, suggest that retirement has long lasting
benefits to individual well‐being.

Health Care utilization:

considers the impact of retirement on health care utilization. Given that we find no adverse health
effects of retirement, one may conclude that utilization is not affected. However, previous studies have
not directly estimated this relationship.

Moreover, measuring utilization directly is useful as it is possible that retirees avoid health decline or see
gains through increased use of the medical system.

Indeed, the OLS results suggest a positive relationship between retirement and
hospitalizations, nursing home use, doctor visits, and home care use on average. However,
the IV results show no statistically significant positive effects and some statistically
significant reductions in utilization from retirement.
On average, hospital stays and prescription drug use decrease upon retirement. The
dynamic analysis show decrease in hospitalization both in short and long run.
retirement is still associated with an overall increase in self‐reported health and reduction in depression
scores, an increase in all life satisfaction measures, a long‐run reduction in most functional limitations, a
reduction in hospital use and prescription drug use, and a long‐run reduction in home care use. F

SDOH: Gender, status, race

- suggest that the lower educated group sees smaller gains in most outcomes. However, we find
no significant differences in utilization except for smaller out‐of‐pocket medical spending.
- Individuals with more physically demanding jobs also experience significantly more health
conditions, lower satisfaction, and more mobility restrictions upon retirement relative to those
without physically demanding jobs. White collar experience less health issues.
- We find no significant differences in utilization except for a smaller decrease in prescription
drugs. This is in line with the findings of Coe and Lindeboom (2008)
- Females see a significantly larger decrease in number of health conditions, smaller
improvements in life satisfaction, and significantly more gross motor limitations relative to men
upon retirement.
- Finally, non‐White race or Hispanic ethnicity is associated with a larger improvement in CESD
scores but smaller improvements in most physical limitations. For utilization measures, non‐
White or Hispanic groups see no reduction in hospital nights and significantly more prescription
drug use than the White group upon retirement.

Neoliberal approach to retirement programs: Pension etc.

As policymakers consider policies to further lengthen working lives and resolve shortfalls in funding for
public retirement programs, it is important to take into account the impact these policies have on the
health and well‐being of working individuals. Moreover, changes in health due to retirement can also
influence health care utilization and therefore the solvency of programs that provide health insurance to
the elderly. This paper provides new evidence to address these questions.

This evidence is consistent with the view that health is a stock variable that does not change
immediately upon retirement but rather evolves over time. If this view is correct, it is likely that a longer
horizon may uncover even more health benefits of retirement. These health improvements are also
consistent with other literature that finds healthy lifestyle changes upon retirement. This literature
suggests that individuals exercise more, have less work stress, sleep better, reduce smoking, and spend
more time preparing food at home

Ferraro and Shippee

Cumulative inequality theory provides a useful framework for studying accumulation processes,
especially in the context of social stratifi cation

(SES) is inversely associated with stress hormones such as cortisol and catecholamines (e.g., epinephrine
and norepinephrine). This is an important fi nding for stress researchers who want to better understand
how accumulated stress influences biologic functioning.

biomarkers of accumulated stress that can be used to examine how people respond to long-term
disadvantage

Cumulative inequality theory gives special attention to family lineage and, concomitantly, reproduction,
gestation, and childhood. The interest in fetal and childhood origins of health is strong,

) we need greater appreciation for older people as survivors and (b) we need to recognize the limitations
of cohort centrism and population truncation for studies of accumulation processes. We also need more
long-term life course studies of aging, especially if we intend to test how inequality accumulates
a. Indeed, research questions about telomere shortening and chronic infl ammation are now being
formulated by social scientists