Abstract
The objective of this qualitative study was to get to know poor Mexican women's experience of poverty in relation to health care. Forty-nine interviews were carried out with poor adult women in Mexico (between 35 and 65 years old). Three central elements were detected in relation to the women's experience of poverty and health care: their socio-economic dependence on their family; the notion of social belonging in their experience with health care rights, reflected in the idea and acceptance that, due to their poverty, they can only be attended at philanthropic institutions; and the existence of survival mechanisms when facing an illness. In recovering the experience of poor women in relation to their health care, we identified that there is a clear idea that, if women had had economic resources, their health problem would have been solved differently. They are also convinced that, due to being poor, they have to content themselves with bad-quality medical care. This conformity finally makes them resign to the fact of either loosing a part of their own body, or even just waiting for death.
Highlights
Women constitute a little more than half the world’s population
Based on the analysis of the reading and codifying of the interviews, three elements were clearly identified in the way in which the women who were interviewed experienced health in poverty: social dependence on their family, the notion of social belonging -from poverty- in their experience with health care rights, and the development of different strategies to survive illness
If the spouses or children are unemployed, the family income diminishes, the quality of life for the whole family is affected and they have problems related to access to health care or healing
Summary
Women constitute a little more than half the world’s population. In spite of efforts carried out in past decades, in general, women live under conditions of inequality and with fewer opportunities. Poverty* continues to be more acute in the case of women, who represent the greater percentage of the world’s population living in absolute poverty. Some world-wide data show that 70% of the people that live in conditions of extreme poverty are women and that 2/3 of them are illiterate [1]. More than 550 million women live in poverty (more than 50% of the world’s rural population). Two-thirds of the 1000 million illiterate adults in the world are women and a third of the homes are headed by a woman. All regions of the world demonstrate a greater rate of unemployment among the women than the men and in Latin America and the Caribbean, between 7 and 11% of the total beneficiaries of credit are women [2]
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