over time, on womens mental health #TimesUp Gender Inequality & - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

#TimesUp Gender Inequality & Women’s Mental Health ESRC Festival of Social Science

Impact of the accumulation of different types of discrimination,

• ver time, on women’s mental

health

Laia Bécares, PhD

Women have multiple intersecting identities and live in and negotiate several systems of privilege and oppression (racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism…)

• Intersecting social identities and systems of oppression result in multiple

social inequalities that reproduce and maintain health inequalities Identifying single forms and attributions of discrimination (e.g., gender discrimination or racial discrimination) is problematic:

• Strips away the context of people’s lives
• Disregards the fact that women often embody more than 1 socially

disadvantaged status

Multiple forms of discrimination

Bowleg, 2012; Brah & Phoenix, 2004; Crenshaw, 1989

Disadvantaged statuses and multiple experiences of discrimination interact to shape women’s health

Women experience different types/domains of discrimination (e.g., employment discrimination, verbal of physical harassment, discrimination in educational settings…) Clear dose-response relationship between increasing number of domains of discrimination experienced and incremental worsening of mental health.

Multiple types of discrimination

• 6
• 5
• 4
• 3
• 2
• 1

Any experience of racism or discrimination One type Two types Three or more types

Source: Wallace et al., 2016. Data presented includes women and men of ethnic minority background

Mental health compared with those without racism exposure

Experiences of discrimination (in their different forms and types) occur throughout women’s lives – in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, late adulthood… These experiences accumulate over time to harm women’s mental health

…over the course of women’s lives

Source: Wallace et al., 2016. Data presented includes women and men of ethnic minority background

• 10
• 8
• 6
• 4
• 2

One event at one time Two or more events at

• ne time

One event at two times Two or more events one time and one event another Two or more events at two times

Mental health compared with those without racism exposure

Putting all these pieces together… Aim: To measure women’s experiences of multiple forms and types of discrimination

• ver time, and their association with mental health.

Data: Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN)  US-based longitudinal study designed to examine the health of women during their middle years. 10 waves. Mental health: Depression (20-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) Discrimination: Frequency of experiences of perceived interpersonal discrimination (Everyday Discrimination Scale). 6 waves. “In your day-to-day life, have you had the following experiences?” Including “You are treated with less courtesy than other people,” “You receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores,” and “People ignore you or act as if you are not there.” Attributions: race/ethnicity, gender, other (age, physical appearance, income level, sexual orientation, language)

Cumulative effects of types and forms of discrimination over time

Class 1 (21%): Highest accumulation of perceived interpersonal discrimination over time, domains, and attributes

Experiences of discrimination

Class 2 (17%): None or very minimal experiences of perceived interpersonal discrimination Class 3 (34%): Accumulation of several domains over time; attribution due mainly to gender Class 4 (28%): Accumulation of some domains over time; attribution due to other reasons; reduction over time

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4

% of the sample in each class of experienced discrimination

• Only a minority of the sample (17%) reported having no experiences or

minimal experiences of perceived discrimination - the large majority of women experienced perceived discrimination that was attributed to multiple social identities

• Only 2 women reported experiencing only racial discrimination, and only 1

reported experiencing only discrimination due to gender

• Very few participants had experienced perceived interpersonal

discrimination in 1 domain across waves or at 1 time point only

Widespread accumulation

Need to consider multiple social positions and oppressed identities when understanding experiences of interpersonal discrimination

Distribution of ethnic groups in each class

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4 Black or African-American Chinese-American Japanese-American Non-Hispanic white

African-American and Chinese-American women were about 6 times more likely than non-Hispanic white women to be in class 1 compared to class 2

Highest reports of depression reported by with women who experienced the highest accumulation of perceived interpersonal discrimination (class 1)

• Overall, women who reported the lowest levels of perceived interpersonal

discrimination (class 2) had 54% less risk of depression compared with women in class 1 True across ethnic groups:

• Compared with African-American women in class 1, African-American

women in class 2 had 0.46 times the risk of reporting depression

• Japanese-American women in class 2 had 0.65 times the risk of

depression, compared with women in class 1

• Non-Hispanic white women in class 2 were 0.52 times as likely,

respectively, to report depression compared with women in class 1

Accumulation of discrimination and mental health

• Women who experience the highest levels of cumulative discrimination are

at greater risk of depression than women who experience minimal levels of discrimination

• Discrimination is harmful for women regardless of ethnic background, but

type and severity of discrimination (and therefore, the accumulated harm

• ver the life course) differs across ethnic groups
• Individuals who belong to multiple stigmatized groups, such as ethnic

minority women and/or women with several marginalised identities, face the greatest burden of these experiences

• Studies that examine exposure to perceived discrimination due to a single

attribute in 1 domain or at 1 point in time underestimate the magnitude and complexity of discrimination and its association with health.

Conclusions

Open access

More info

Bowleg, L. (2012). The problem with the phrase women and minorities: intersectionality-an important theoretical framework for public

• health. American journal of public health, 102(7), 1267-1273.

Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I A Woman? Revisiting

• Intersectionality. Journal of International Women's Studies, 5(3), 75-86.

Crenshaw K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167. Wallace, S., Nazroo, J., & Bécares, L. (2016). Cumulative Effect of Racial Discrimination on the Mental Health of Ethnic Minorities in the United

• Kingdom. American journal of public health, 106(7), 1294-300.

References

l.becares@sussex.ac.uk

Thank you