Inequalities and Intersections in Health: A Review of the Evidence

Social relations of power based on gender, class, caste, race, and ethnicity structure women’s and men’s exposure and vulnerability to ill-health, their access to health protective resources, and the consequences to them of disease, disability and violence (Lynch and Kaplan, 2000; Östlin, 2002). Since the 1990s, feminist theorists have increasingly argued that these axes of power are intertwined as processes that construct and are constructed by the other (Collins, 1998; Davis, 2008; McCann and Kim, 2003). The interrelationships occur in-and affect-individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements and cultural ideologies (Davis, 2008).