Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to learn more

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Gender & Society
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Reid, C.
Right arrow Articles by Tom, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Poor Women's Discourses of Legitimacy, Poverty, and Health

Colleen Reid

Simon Fraser University

Allison Tom

University of British Columbia

In this study, we sought a better understanding of how poor women made meaning of their poverty and health. Twenty research participants used varied, multiple, and at times contradictory discourses that shaped their identities as both legitimate and powerful and illegitimate and powerless. We identified four discourses in the women's talk—illegitimate dependencies, legitimate dependencies, overwhelming odds, and critique and collectivism. These four discourses revealed complexes of meanings and networks of interpretation that subverted, accommodated, and reinterpreted dominant discourses of poverty and health. This examination is relevant for feminist researchers attempting to understand the impact of dominant discourses in the lives of socially marginalized women who continually struggle to establish and strengthen claims to legitimacy and moral worth.

Key Words: discourse • identity • poverty • women's health • feminist action research

Gender & Society, Vol. 20, No. 3, 402-421 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0891243206286939
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Gender SocietyHome page
A. V. Bell
"It's Way out of my League": Low-income Women's Experiences of Medicalized Infertility
Gender Society, October 1, 2009; 23(5): 688 - 709.
[Abstract] [PDF]