This research utilizes an intersectionality framework to examine the complexity of social location and its effects on women's health. By examining connections among the state, processes of globalization, and the production of health inequalities for poor women in a rural community in southern Veracruz, Mexico, the research highlights the nexus of nationality, class, and gender. Four interconnected contexts are explored: (1) women's increasing paid and unpaid labor in the context of a poverty of resources brought on by sustained economic crisis; (2) the maintenance of reproductive labor as the responsibility of women; (3) the development of migrant "illegality" and its consequences for the well being of women who are consistently anxious about the lives of their migrant family members and the stability of remittances that sustain the household, and (4) the increasing neoliberalization of public health care that includes the heightened surveillance of women's hygienic activities and chronic underfunding of public health resources. Using an ethnographic methodology including interviews, case studies, and participant observation, the research explores the daily lives of wives and mothers of transnational migrants as well as those women who, although they do not have migrant family members, live within the context of transnationalism because it pervades the community. In addition, all women in the research confront the inadequacy of public health services because most never have the resources to utilize private health services. The research makes three important contributions to medical anthropology and the social sciences. First, it contributes to ongoing debates concerning the potential uses of the intersectionality framework in anthropology and related social sciences. Second, it contributes to border studies by elaborating an example of productive ways that the border can be theoretically extended to include examinations of the lives of migrant family members living far from the border. Third, it critically examines a public health insurance program that has the potential to fulfill Mexico's constitutional right to health care for all citizens and to be a model for global health care policy. By doing so, it provides a basis for future study and development of progressive health care policy in Mexico and beyond.

This ethnographic research examines the daily life and institutional conditions under which low-income Black women in urban North Carolina perceived and attended to HIV health-related needs. I focus specifically on the interplay among women’s living conditions, programmatic service needs, and their strategies for navigating the local system of care to explore and refine the categorical label “low income.” I found that there were significant differences among study participants in terms of their monthly incomes and financial resources, housing quality and status, and personal experiences with incarceration and substance abuse. The economic differences among women translated into social differences within the context of federally-funded AIDS care programs. Social differences were realized as the differential ability to transform programmatic services enrollment into beneficial social networks. Ultimately, financially stable women were better positioned than their more economically vulnerable counterparts to reap the economic and social benefits of programmatic services eligibility and enrollment. It is in this context that I explore federally-funded AIDS care services as one social field through which processes of class unfold and articulate with processes of race and gender.

Previous literature has evidenced that young African American males are experiencing less academic success than their Caucasian male and African American female counterparts (Davis, Williams, & Williams, 2004; Flores, 2007). The deceleration of achievement in this population has spawned some inquiry into the struggles of African American students. However, investigators have primarily examined differences in sex, school attributes, socioeconomic status, family structure, and other external factors. Previous research has also highlighted the unique obstacles young African American men face in education settings. While researchers have identified several external predictors of academic achievement among African American males, scant information relates to identity factors outside of racial identity that correlate to and help predict academic achievement. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the influence of identity components (racial identity, masculinity, and academic self-concept) on the academic achievement of young African American male high school students. The data used for this study were archival and obtained from an umbrella project entitled the African American Males in Education Project A.A.M.P.E.D. Participants were recruited from a predominately African American High School located in the Southeastern U.S. There were 156 participants, all of which were African American males between the ages of 13-19. The findings from the current study can be summarized in three key points (a) the independent variables (academic self-concept, racial identity, and masculinity) were each significantly correlated to GPA, (b) the combination of the aforementioned identity factors significantly predicted GPA, and (c) no moderation or mediation effects were present in regards to the relationship between racial identity and GPA. Specifically, the findings suggested that following the control variable of parental education level, masculinity is the largest contributor in predicting GPA. Results also highlighted new findings regarding the unique and changing relationship of young African American males and academic self-concept. The current findings raised crucial questions about the inclusion of this population in research and future study. In conclusion, results from this study support the need for further research using identity factors in reference to the academic outcomes of young African American male students.

This study is constructed upon narratives of fourteen young women, who have been working in prostitution since they were street children in central Lima, and acknowledges their stigmatization in the Peruvian society, and how they challenge their socially constructed position. By combining narrative method with an intersectional analysis I have, through a multi-layered loupe, interpreted the young women’s interpretation of themselves and their social world. I will bring forward how these young women view their subordinate and stigmatized position through their narratives surrounding their bodies as shameful, culpable, sexual and fixed. This stigmatization is intersectional as it surrounds all parts of their lives and situatedness within the Peruvian society. This situatedness is complex, involving hierarchical structures that have been present in Peru since colonization and imperialism (cf. Wade 2009). In addition, I will bring forward how the young women engage in strategies to challenge this stigmatization by applying measures to increase their respectability (cf. Skeggs).

During the last decades, scholars have discussed the changes of Swedish alcohol culture. Among other things, it has been suggested that parallel with increased consumption levels men’s and women’s drinking is becoming more similar. In connection with this discussion, the purpose of this thesis is to examine Swedish alcohol culture(s) by analysing the meanings that focus groups from different generations ascribe to drinking in relation to different life periods: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. More specifically, it aims to analyse how the interviewees specify and negotiate normative boundaries and self-presentations in relation to norms and discourses of gender and age. An essential part of the analysis is to examine differences within gender and age-groups, as well as the similarities between them. The findings suggest that even though drinking patterns are changing in terms of quantity and choice of beverage, meanings, motives and norms seem to be rather stable – especially in regard to gender. Overall, a distinction is being made between men and women: Femininity is constructed in terms of control, responsibility and caring, and masculinity in terms of fearlessness, breaking of boundaries, and loss of control. Men’s and women’s drinking are also accounted for in different ways. While men’s drinking behaviours are excused with arguments about biology and hormones, women’s (anticipated) responsibility is explained with their connection to motherhood. However; these norms vary in strength and are expressed in different ways, depending on the drinking norms of different life-periods; mainly moderate in childhood and adulthood, and mainly orientated to binge-drinking in adolescence. With regard to positive meanings ascribed to drinking, similarities between age and gender groups are also generally greater than the differences between them. Thus, gendered differences are mainly constructed in relation to behaviours that are perceived as risky or problematic.

Every employee embodies manifestations of every demographic that attach to him or her different minority and majority statuses at the same time. As these statuses are often related to organizational hierarchies, employees frequently hold positions of dominance and subordination at the same time. Thus, a given individual's coping strategies (or coping behavior) in terms of minority stress due to organizational processes of hierarchization, marginalization and discrimination, are very often a simultaneous coping in terms of more than one demographic. Research on minority stress mostly focuses on single demographics representing only single facets of workforce diversity. By integrating the demographics of age, disability status, nationality, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and religion into one framework, the intersectional model proposed in this article broadens the perspective on minorities and related minority stress in the workplace. It is shown that coping with minority stress because of one demographic must always be interpreted in relation to the other demographics. The manifestation of one demographic can limit or broaden one's coping resources for coping with minority stress because of another dimension. Thus the manifestation of one demographic can determine the coping opportunities and coping behavior one applies to situations because of the minority status of another demographic. This coping behavior can include disclosure decisions about invisible demographics. Therefore organizational interventions aiming to create a supportive workplace environment and equal opportunities for every employee (e.g. diversity management approaches) should include more demographics instead of focusing only on few. (author's abstract)

Considers Bolivian Andean indigenous forms of democracy and resistance to neoliberal water privatization in Cochabamba. Incorporates environmental identity into the intersectional theoretical framework with principles rooted in Indigenous grass roots theory, Marxist critiques on capitalism, Latin American Neomarxist scholars, and Environmental Justice. Focuses on intersections of ethnicity, gender and class identities with environmental identity to understand the extent to which environmental injustices cannot be addressed in isolation from other sources of inequality.

Democracy Now! is an independently syndicated hour long daily audio and video program that is broadcast on 1179 radio, television, and internet stations throughout the world, as well as being freely available on their website under a Creative-Commons License. They are a global news organization based in New York City, with the stated goal of providing “rarely heard” perspectives in their coverage. Democracy Now! was one of the early independent news organizations to provide continuous coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York's Zuccotti park. Their early coverage of the movement is relevant to the extent that it helps to obviate the demographics of the OWS movement as well as highlight the potential for a “radically-democratic agonistic pluralism,” as conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Through the dual frames of discourse and intersectionality theories, this qualitiative study examines the coverage of Occupy Wall Street by Democracy Now!, in an attempt to understand the interplay of the movement's demographic heterogeneity and the manner in which its public antagonism is characterized by this independent media outlet. The sociopolitical and historical context provided by Democracy Now! is used to understand where the outlet exists with in the media as well as if this coverage can be part of “radical democratic possibilities.”

Background: Pregnancy has been described as a period when women experience heightened behavioural surveillance. Young single women have commonly been described as a population who engage in high risk behaviours during pregnancy (e.g. smoking), yet they are also a population who often has access to fewer resources to make expected behaviour changes during pregnancy. Purpose: To explore the experiences of young single pregnant and parenting women regarding behavioural expectations and behaviour change during pregnancy. Research Questions: (1) What are the perceived behavioural expectations for young single women during pregnancy? (2) Who or what reinforces the perceived behavioural expectations? (3) To which behavioural expectations do young single women conform (or resist) and why? Methods: Nine single pregnant or parenting women between the ages of 15 and 24 were recruited from two urban community health settings between November 2011 and January 2012. Data was collected through individual semi-structured photo-elicitation interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The main findings of the study include: (1) young single pregnant women are subject to a multitude of health and social behavioural expectations, (2) young single women experience internal and external behavioural surveillance during pregnancy, and (3) young single pregnant women experience these behavioural expectations as a tension between the potential for opportunity and oppression. Implications for Practice: By understanding young single pregnant women’s perceptions of how they are expected to behave, who and what reinforces such expectations, and how young women conform to or resist such expectations, the results of this project will inform the development of effective individual, community, and systemic level interventions and better inform interactions with young pregnant women.

The everyday practices of maternity and beauty are important for the enactment of femininity. This dissertation deals with femininities created in the context of changing ideas about “normality” in Soviet Russia during the mid 1930s-1960s and explores a diversity of norms, discourses and rituals. The main sources are women’s magazines, advice books, and interviews with women living now in three different cities of the Russian Federation – Moscow, Saratov (Volga region) and Ufa (capital of Bashkortostan Republic). The results of the research suggest that some parts of the Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty turn out to be similar to those that were characteristic for other European countries of the same historical period. At the same time the interviews show that the modern practices of medical and welfare institutions, the consumption of clothes as well as advice about appearance and childcare were situated in the context of shortages of goods, women’s work outside of home, rhetorics of the “naturalness” of maternity for every woman as well as that of a woman’s particular need to care about looking nice. Together with the home reproduction of many rural/patriarchal rituals of maternity and beauty it led to a contradictory everyday performance of femininity. Fluctuating categories of social status, ethnical belonging, geographical location and generation also contributed to a diversity of femininity constructions. Common sense normativities concerning practices of becoming a mother, caring for a baby and making oneself beautiful suggest that Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty were only partly accepted and reproduced by women. They were also partly rejected and subverted in everyday practices. The analysis of maternity and beauty practices shows that performative femininities were utterly complex. / <p>Boken innehåller en sammanfattning på ryska.</p>