In our society that values men over women and youth over old age, sexism and ageism intersect to erode women's status more rapidly and severely than men's. However, limited attention is given to women's responses to their devaluation, particularly collective efforts to either resist or accommodate dominant beliefs about ageing women. We examine membership in the Red Hat Society, an international organisation for middle-aged and older women, as a response to gendered ageism. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with members (N = 52), our analysis focuses on the group's ‘performance of girlhood’, which involves adopting children's social roles, dressing up and playing. We examine its resonance with a dominant cultural metaphor for old age as ‘second childhood’, illustrating how it not only provides opportunities for resistance to gendered ageism but also contributes to its entrenchment. The behaviours constitute a performative act that resists gendered ageism by increasing ageing women's visibility and asserting their right to leisure. However, its accommodative features reproduce inequality by valuing youth over old age and depicting older women as girls engaging in frivolous activities, which can be seen as obstructing social change.
BackgroundWe apply Intersectional Theory to examine how compounded disadvantage affects the odds of women having a cesarean in U.S.-Mexico border hospitals and in non-border hospitals. We define U.S. Latinas with compounded disadvantage as those who have neither a college education nor private health insurance.ResultsAnalyzing quantitative and qualitative data from Childbirth Connection’s Listening to Mothers III Survey, we find that, consistent with the notion of the Latinx Health Paradox, compounded disadvantage serves as a protective buffer and decreases the odds of cesarean among women in non-border hospitals. However, the Latinx Health Paradox is absent on the border.ConclusionOur data show that women with compounded disadvantage who give birth on the border have significantly higher odds of a cesarean compared to women without such disadvantage. Further, women with compounded disadvantage who give birth in border hospitals report receiving insufficient prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum information, providing a direction for future research to explain the border disparity in cesareans.
This article uses unique data to explore individual claims-making on the Terri Schiavo case. We analyze 2,509 e-mails sent to Jeb Bush and 1,182 newspaper stories about the Schiavo case to assess how mass media, claims-makers, and individual experience affect the frames and identities used to support or oppose intervention on Terri's behalf. We find that the frames individuals use vary according to whether they support Bush's involvement in the case. In addition, we find that the frames individuals use in their claims-making do not always mirror those discussed in mass media. Specifically, the frequency with which e-mailers discuss particular ideas varies according to the engagement of claims-makers on the issue as well as the complexity of the frame. Finally, we find that some individuals do deploy identities strategically in their e-mails. Opponents of intervention, for instance, use their political identities as Republicans to urge Bush to stay out of the case. Not all identity deployment, however, corresponds with support or opposition to Bush's involvement on the Schiavo case. Individuals use their familial and religious identities to both support and oppose intervention. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance of these findings for understanding claims-making in the twenty-first century.
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