Advancing Black Feminism In Public Health

I selected sociological perspectives as conceptual frameworks for challenging the matrix of domination in public health. Collectively, they serve as intellectual tools for confronting the taken-for-granted practices that heighten marginalized groups’ public health threats.

• Gans Positive Functions of Poverty highlights 15 economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of dominant groups benefiting from the matrix of domination.  Among these 15 functions of poverty, some have direct implication for public health, including: (1)  relegating the poor to menial low wage jobs with no health insurance; (2) the poor being taken-for-granted patients for teaching medical students; and (3) continued exploitation of poor people as subjects of medical experiments, especially biomedical trials that more affluent members of society are not willing to risk their health on, to advance medical breakthroughs. 

• Social Reproduction Theory is relevant for examining how inter-generational social, economic, and educational inequalities impact morbidity, mortality, and heighten health threats associated with lifestyle choices and built environments.

• Merton’s Strain Theory explains what happens when social institutions fail to grant equal access toward achieving “The American Dream”.  According to Merton, people who face strain (systems barriers) in pursuit of socially acceptable goals adapt in ways deemed deviant by societal standards.

• Social conflict theory was introduced in blog 3 and is relevant for challenging the matrix of domination as well. Specifically, conflict theorists argue that the overall social and structural systems within which public health and medical services are provided are exploitative by design; and therefore, to obtain the level of equity envisioned by a social justice paradigm in public health would require a massive redistribution of power and related resources.

• Radical Feminism stems from the conflict sociological perspective, and is concerned with how the matrix of domination oppresses women and privileges (white) men through patriarchal practices. Radical feminists advocate for dismantling systems built to benefit privileged white men at the expense and exploitation of other oppressed groups of people.