One of the greatest social injustices is that people who are marginalized experience more illnesses,
disability, and shorter lives than those who are more affluent (Benzeval, Judge, and Whitehead,
1995). In this dissertation I critique the notion that health is affected by poverty through primarily
material factors. In fact, poor women are systematically excluded from resources and
opportunities to pursue their health. This feminist action research project addressed how poverty
and exclusion influenced poor women's health, examined how a group of women negotiated their
experiences of poverty and health, and developed action strategies to address their shared
concerns.
For 1 V2 years I worked with a group of 30 poor women and gathered qualitative data from 15
meetings, 32 interviews, and 30 sets of fieldnotes. The women lived in material deprivation and
could not afford the most basic living necessities. They felt stereotyped, excluded, and invisible in
their every day lives. The stereotype of the "welfare recipient" fueled institutional stigmatization
and surveillance. Welfare, health care, and community recreation workers were threatening,
withheld important information, and limited the women's access to services through
chscriminatory practices and policies. The women had limited access to health-promoting
resources, and their interactions with authorities were shaming which negatively influenced their
psychosocial health through stress, depression, low self-esteem, and anger. Services that were
meant to help them labelled them as poor and hurniliated them. The women's shame, material
scarcity, and limited access to resources engendered feelings of lack of control and hopelessness
and influenced their health.
The women's varied discourses of poverty and health reflected attempts at finding legitimacy in a
society that systematically excluded and de-legitimized them. Through their conversations and
our feminist action research work together, they uncovered legitimate identities within
experiences of poverty and ill-health and advocated action and social change. They cited a
"livable" income, accessible health-promoting resources, and redressing stigmatizing practices
and policies as changes required to improve their health. These findings confirmed that the social
determinants of health must be reframed to better understand the effects of exclusion on poor
women's health and that inclusion, respect, and dignity are fundamental conditions for promoting
health.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/13509 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Reid, Colleen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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