RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The contribution of a gender perspective to the understanding of migrants’ health
JF Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
JO J Epidemiol Community Health
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
SP ii4
OP ii10
DO 10.1136/jech.2007.061770
VO 61
IS Suppl 2
A1 Alicia Llácer
A1 María Victoria Zunzunegui
A1 Julia del Amo
A1 Lucía Mazarrasa
A1 Francisco Bolůmar
YR 2007
UL http://jech.bmj.com/content/61/Suppl_2/ii4.abstract
AB In 2005 women represented approximately half of all 190 million international migrants worldwide. This paper addresses the need to integrate a gender perspective into epidemiological studies on migration and health, outlines conceptual gaps and discusses some methodological problems. We mainly consider the international voluntary migrant. Women may emigrate as wives or as workers in a labour market in which they face double segregation, both as migrants and as women. We highlight migrant women’s heightened vulnerability to situations of violence, as well as important gaps in our knowledge of the possible differential health effects of factors such as poverty, unemployment, social networks and support, discrimination, health behaviours and use of services. We provide an overview of the problems of characterising migrant populations in the health information systems, and of possible biases in the health effects caused by failure to take the triple dimension of gender, social class and ethnicity into account.