Jen’nan Ghazal Read

Gender Disparities in Adult Health: An Examination of Three Measures of Morbidity

Recent examinations of gender differences in physical health suggest that womens disadvantage may be smaller than previously assumed, varying by health status measure and age. Using data from the 1997–2001 National Health Interview Surveys, we examine gender-by-age differences in life-threatening medical conditions, functional limitations, and self-rated health and consider whether potential mediating mechanisms (e.g., socioeconomic status, behavioral factors) operate uniformly across health measures. The results show that the gender gap is smallest for life-threatening medical conditions and that men do increasingly worse with age. For self-rated health, men are more likely to report excellent health at younger ages, but with increasing age this gap closes. Only for functional limitations do we find a consistent pattern of female disadvantage: Women report more functional limitations than men, and the gap increases with age. The ability of explanatory mechanisms to account for these patterns varies by the health measure examined.

Veiled Submission: Gender, Power, and Identity Among Evangelical and Muslim Women in the United States

The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of studies that illuminate devout womens affiliation with conservative religious communities. Despite the increasingly multicultural character of contemporary social and religious life, few studies to date have compared the experiences of conservative religious women across faith traditions. Guided by insights from cultural theory, this study begins by comparing elite gender discourses within evangelical Protestantism and Islam. Elite evangelical gender debates hinge on biblical references to womens submission. Similarly, Muslims dispute the meaning of the veil to Islamic womanhood. After outlining the contours of these debates, we draw on in-depth interview data with evangelical and Muslim women to demonstrate how these two groups of respondents negotiate gender in light of their distinctive religious commitments. In the end, we reveal that the unique cultural repertoires within these two religious communities enable women to affirm traditional religious values while refashioning such convictions to fit their post-traditional lifestyles.

The Sources of Gender Role Attitudes among Christian and Muslim Arab-American Women

This study examines the impact of religion on the gender role attitudes of Arab-American women, members of an ethnic group comprised of Christians and Muslims. A popular stereotype of Arab-American women portrays them as islamic traditionalists - veiled and secluded within the home, yet few empirical studies document the effects of Islam on Arab-American womens attitudes and behaviors. This study addresses this question and distinguishes particular cultural influences on womens gender beliefs using survey data collected from a national sample of Arab Americans. Results of the analysis find that Arab-American women are more diverse and less traditional than popular stereotypes imply. Over one-half of women sampled are Christian, nearly one-half are foreign-bom, and many hold progressive gender role beliefs. Moreover, the analysis finds that religiosity and ethnicity are more important in shaping womens gender role attitudes than are their affiliations as Muslims and Christians

Implications of black immigrant health for U.S. racial disparities in health.

This paper contributes to a growing understanding of U.S. black-white health disparities by using national-level data to disaggregate the health status of black Americans into the following subgroups: U.S.-born blacks, black immigrants from Africa, black immigrants from the West Indies, and black immigrants from Europe. Using new data on the 2000 and 2001 National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS), the authors compare the status of U.S.- and foreign-born blacks to that of U.S.-born whites on three measures of health. The analysis finds that U.S.-born and European-born blacks have worse self-rated health, higher odds of activity limitation, and higher odds of limitation due to hypertension compared to U.S.-born whites. In contrast, African-born blacks have better health than U.S.-born whites on all three measures, while West Indian-born blacks have poorer self-rated health and higher odds of limitation due to hypertension but lower odds of activity limitation. These findings suggest that grouping together foreign-born blacks misses important variations within this population. Rather than being uniform, the black immigrant health advantage varies by region of birth and by health status measure. The authors conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for researchers, health professionals, and public policy.

Cultural influences on immigrant women's labor force participation: The Arab-American case

Research on the economic activity of immigrant women has flourished in recent years. The current study extends this literature to examine the labor force activity of Arab-American women, a group whose labor market experiences provide an exception to hitherto accepted theoretical explanations. The employment rates of Arab immigrant women rank among the lowest of any immigrant group, while the rates of native-born Arab-American women resemble those of U.S.-born white women. This study examines potential explanations for these differences using data from the U.S. Census and a national mail survey of Arab-American women. Contrary to findings for other immigrant groups, differences among Arab-American women cannot be explained by their human capital characteristics or family resources, but are almost entirely due to traditional cultural norms that prioritize womens family obligations over their economic activity, and to ethnic and religious social networks that encourage the maintenance of traditional gender roles. This study concludes by underscoring the need for additional research on the impact of culture on immigrant womens employment.

Gender, acculturation, and health among Mexican Americans.

This study examines whether the relationship between acculturation and physical health varies by gender among Mexican Americans, and if the mechanisms that mediate the acculturation-health relationship operate differently by gender. Using the 1998–2007 National Health Interview Study, we construct a composite measure of acculturation and estimate regression models for the total number of health conditions, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. Immigrants with the lowest levels of acculturation are the healthiest, but this association is stronger for men. Medical care plays a central role in accounting for gender and acculturation differences across health outcomes—increased access to and utilization of medical care is associated with worse health, which suggests that better health among recent arrivals (particularly men) partially results from their lack of knowledge about their own poor health.

Gender and the Education-Employment Paradox in Ethnic and Religious Contexts: The Case of Arab Americans.

Education is weakly related to employment for some groups of U.S. women. As such, it may be less of a resource for reducing gender inequality than commonly believed. Drawing on ethnographic field notes and in-depth interviews with Arab Americans, we recast the motivations and consequences of female education in terms of cultural schemas and resources and then analyze the processes that underlie the education-employment link in ethnic and religious contexts. Arab American women are a particularly useful case study because they have higher educational attainments but lower employment rates than most other groups of U.S. women. Our findings shed light on this paradox. Arab Americans universally support female education as a resource, not for economic mobility, but to ensure the proper socialization of children, solidarity of the family, and ultimately the maintenance of ethnic and religious identity. Contrary to the widely held assumption that female education will equalize gender power dynamics, our results highlight how and when womens education may reproduce patriarchal gender relations. This is the case in religious and ethnic contexts where women forgo market opportunities to fulfill familial responsibilities, and where parents and children view female education as a collective family resource—a resource to be invested in the home rather than in the market.

Gender Differences in Immigrant Health: The Case of Mexican and Middle Eastern Immigrants

This article draws on theories of gender inequality and immigrant health to hypothesize differences among the largest immigrant population, Mexicans, and a lesser known population of Middle Easterners. Using data from the 2000-2007 National Health Interview Surveys, we compare health outcomes among immigrants to those among U.S.-born whites and assess gender differences within each group. We find an immigrant story and a gender story. Mexican and Middle Eastern immigrants are healthier than U.S.-born whites, and men report better health than women regardless of nativity or ethnicity. We identify utilization of health care as a primary mechanism that contributes to both patterns. Immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born whites to interact with the health care system, and women are more likely to do so than men. Thus, immigrant and gender health disparities may partly reflect knowledge of health status rather than actual health.

Gender and Health Revisited

During the last 4 decades, we have seen a tremendous expansion in what we know about the health profiles of men and women. In the broadest terms, women enjoy an advantage over men when it comes to life expectancy and mortality but are disadvantaged when it comes to morbidity or illness. Put differently, women can expect to live longer than men, but their lives are more likely to be lived in poor health (Allendale and Hunt 2000). This general finding has garnered much attention, debate, and scrutiny in recent years, with the result being renewed interest in determining the exact size and scope of gendered health disparities as well as identifying the mechanisms that contribute to differences between men and women. Several key questions guide contemporary research, including but not limited to: Are women uniformly sicker than men across the range of mental and physical health outcomes? Does this vary by age and position in the life course? Is it the same for men and women in different racial/ethnic groups? How do biology, social structural position, behavioral, and lifestyle factors combine to differentially shape the mental and physical health of men and women?

Determinants of non-urgent Emergency Department attendance among females in Qatar

Background: The use of emergency department (ED) services for non-urgent conditions is well-studied in many Western countries but much less so in the Middle East and Gulf region. While the consequences are universal—a drain on ED resources and poor patient outcomes—the causes and solutions are likely to be region and country specific. Unique social and economic circumstances also create gender-specific motivations for patient attendance. Alleviating demand on ED services requires understanding these circumstances, as past studies have shown. We undertook this study to understand why female patients with low-acuity conditions choose the emergency department in Qatar over other healthcare options. Setting and design: Prospective study at Hamad General Hospitals (HGH) emergency department female “see-and-treat” unit that treats low-acuity cases. One hundred female patients were purposively recruited to participate in the study. Three trained physicians conducted semi-structured interviews with patients over a three-month period after they had been treated and given informed consent. Results: The study found that motivations for ED attendance were systematically influenced by employment status as an expatriate worker. Forty percent of the sample had been directed to the ED by their employers, and the vast majority (89%) of this group cited employer preference as the primary reason for choosing the ED. The interviews revealed that a major obstacle to workers using alternative facilities was the lack of a government-issued health card, which is available to all citizens and residents at a nominal rate. Conclusion: Reducing the number of low-acuity cases in the emergency department at HGH will require interventions aimed at encouraging patients with non-urgent conditions to use alternative healthcare facilities. Potential interventions include policy changes that require employers to either provide workers with a health card or compel employees to acquire one for themselves.