Embedded gender and social changes underpinning inequalities in health: An ethnographic insight into a local Spanish context

Mar García-Calvente, Jorge Marcos-Marcos, María del Río-Lozano, Natalia Hidalgo-Ruzzante and Gracia Maroto-Navarro

Social Science & Medicine, 2012, vol. 75, issue 12, 2225-2232

Abstract: Despite growing interest in the social determinants of health and contributions from studies focussing on the analysis of explanations to enhance our understanding of the interactions between gender identities, embodied experiences and structural inequalities between men and women, few research papers have devoted attention to this perspective in the Spanish context. This study is an empirical exploration of lay knowledge, for an enhanced understanding of health inequalities in this context, from an ethnographic standpoint based on a phenomenological approach. Specifically, our aim is to study the lay perceptions of men and women regarding their gender identity and living conditions as health determinants within different "contexts" of their everyday lives, namely: the personal context; the home context; and the neighbourhood context. Fifty eight in-depth interviews and three focus groups were held between January 2005 and January 2007, and analysed using a hermeneutic method. Our findings show how disease-coping strategies or the perceived loss of social cohesion are linked to the gender system. They also point to how the dynamics of social change have developed around a strong division between the productive and reproductive arenas. Approaching these issues from different "contexts" provides insights into the explanations for the gendered patterning of mortality and morbidity, as well as furthering our understanding of the basis for social embodiment of gender differences and health inequalities in the context studied. In the discussion of our findings, we place emphasis on the implications that informal caring has for these processes and also take into account contributions of the "lay approach" to study and understand social determinants and health inequalities.

Keywords: Spain; Gender; Social determinants; Health inequalities; Lay knowledge; Emdodiment; Qualitative methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612006296
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:12:p:2225-2232

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.08.022

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().