Gender and Sexuality Commons^™

Loss Of Self In Dissociation In Prostitution; Recovery Of Self In Connection To Horses: A Survivor's Journey, Sandra Norak

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This narrative is about dissociation in the lives of women who have been exploited through prostitution. When we speak about prostitution, we do not speak often enough about the dissociation needed for women and girls to survive sexual exploitation. The author challenges the wisdom of governments such as Germany that legalize prostitution, treating it as a “job” and ignoring the violence and subsequent dissociation in women. The author describes her personal journey, explaining how women are traumatized even after the first commercial sex act, which is a sexual assault. They dissociate which makes their lives bearable, but they fail to …

Pornography As A Public Health Issue: Promoting Violence And Exploitation Of Children, Youth, And Adults, Elisabeth Taylor

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The pornography industry is expanding exponentially as a result of ongoing technological advances. The ability to stream videos over the internet and the ubiquity of the smart phone have meant that pornography producers are able to use algorithms to target potential consumers, to cultivate new sexual tastes and to deliver content to a more diverse audience over mobile devices. The advent of virtual reality pornography with interactive sex toys and sex robots imbued with artificial intelligence promises to unleash a further step-change in the extent to which pornography influences ‘real-world’ sexual culture. The critical analysis of pornography undertaken over decades …

Reproductive Rights In Latin America: A Case Study Of Guatemala And Nicaragua, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

A lack of access to contraceptives and legal abortion for women throughout the nations of Nicaragua and Guatemala creates critical health care problems. Moreover, rural and underprivileged women in Guatemala and Nicaragua are facing greater limitations to birth control access, demonstrating a classist aspect in the global struggle for female reproductive rights. Although some efforts have been made over the past half-century to initiate a dialogue on the failure of medical care in these nations to adequately address issues of maternal mortality and reproductive rights, the women's reproductive health movements of Nicaragua and Guatemala have struggled to reach an effective …

A Pilot Self-Care Group Intervention For Low-Income Hiv-Positive Women, Maithe Enriquez, Margaret S. Miles, Jacki Witt, Paul Gore, Nancy Lackey

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

This article describes the development of a self-care intervention and examines its efficacy with low-income HIV-positive women (n=34) in the Midwestern United States. Adapted from an individual nurse-led intervention, this effort focused on increasing self-care behaviors through enhancing self-esteem and social support. The investigators used a community-based participatory approach and partnered with three HIV-positive women to adapt and pilot test the new group intervention. A within-group, repeated-measures, pre-/post-test design, together with participant interviews, was used to evaluate the intervention. Mean scores on measures of self-care behaviors, self-esteem, social support and depressive symptoms all changed in the clinically desirable direction. Group …

Process Evaluation In Action: Lessons Learned From Alabama Reach 2010, M. C. Nagy, Rhoda E. Johnson, Robin C. Vanderpool, Mona N. Fouad, Mark Dignan, Theresa A. Wynn, Edward E. Patridge, Isabel Scarinci, Cheryl Holt, Sharina D. Person

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

The CDC-funded Alabama Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH 2010) project is designed to reduce and eliminate disparities in breast and cervical cancer between African American and white women in six rural and three urban counties in Alabama. In this manuscript, we report on the development, implementation, results, and lessons learned from a process evaluation plan initiated during the Phase I planning period of the Alabama REACH 2010 program. The process evaluation plan for Alabama REACH 2010 focused on four main areas of activity that coincided with program objectives: assessing coalition development, building community capacity, conducting a needs …

Inflammatory Biomarkers And Subclinical Atherosclerosis In African-American Women With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (Sle), Edith Williams, Carlos Crespo, Joan Dorn

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Women with lupus are at increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Previous studies of atherosclerosis in SLE have not been representative of the minority groups most affected by lupus and its complications. Therefore, a study of 41 lupus cases and 83 controls was conducted to investigate the relationship between carotid atherosclerosis and inflammation in African-American women. Participation consisted of a questionnaire, physical examination, fasting blood draw, and ultrasound of the carotid arteries. There were observed differences between cases and controls with regard to carotid intima media thickness (IMT) and traditional cardiovascular risk factors, although few reached statistical significance. Tumor …

Association Of Vitamin D Deficiency With Hypertension In Uninsured Women, Sreenivasa R. Chandana, Lakshmi P. Kocharla, Susan S. Harris, Radhika R. Kakarala

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic in the United States. Uninsured women are at high risk due to a lower intake of vitamin D and limited sun exposure. We examined the association between vitamin D deficiency and hypertension in 96 uninsured women at a County Free Medical Clinic in urban Michigan. Questionnaires were used to obtain information about demographics, medical history including hypertension, and dietary habits. Measurements including blood pressure and serum 25(OH)D level were also collected. Prevalence of hypertension was higher in subjects with 25(OH)D less than 50nmol/l compared with others (85% vs. 27.3%, p = 0.014). For every …

U.S. Women And Hiv Infection, P. Clay Stephens

New England Journal of Public Policy

Women are inadequately provided with HIV services and education and are differentially denied access to these. Divisions of race, ethnicity, economic class, and religion, among others, are compounded by sexual discrimination within each of these categories.

Review of current data on women with AIDS reveals that the reporting methods used convey a false impression that women are not at significant risk. Moreover, the persons indirectly affected by AIDS are predominantly women — mothers, sisters, partners, family members, teachers, and human service workers. Thus, AIDS is more of a women's issue than the statistics imply.

Women, as a gender-defined class, face …