Women Of Color Research Articles

Psi Chi/Inez Beverly Prosser Scholarship for Women of Color

Psi Chi/Inez Beverly Prosser Scholarship for Women of Color

Being a conduit and culprit of white language supremacy: a duo autohistoria-teoría

In this manuscript, two normalistas-teachers, who are Women of Color in the United States, reflected on our experiences as educators. In a chronological narrative structure, we each told stories related to our experiences with languages and literacy. Using Anzaldúa’s autohistoria-teoría—a decolonial research methodology—we constructed situated knowledge based on our personal reflections of our experiences. More specifically, we uncovered ways we have been conduits of white language supremacy, interrogated how white language supremacy has impacted our teaching, and revealed our growth in our stance towards linguistic justice. Through the lens of raciolinguistics, we reveal our own victimization, internalized racist linguicism, and subsequent perpetuation of linguistic imperialism. Because of our professional successes as a result of English proficiency, we bought into the myth that acquiring Standard American English was necessary to ensure the success of students with racialized identities and failed to fully value language plurality. At this point in our professional journeys, however, we are committed to work characterized by 1) a recognition of the ways language and race are inextricably entwined, 2) evidenced appreciation for non-Western language varieties, 3) use of translanguaging as resistance, 4) culturally sustaining writing instruction (Woodard, Vaughan, & Machado, 2017), and 5) multimodal communication practices. Our manuscript is important because it models the kind of vulnerability, theorization, and critical reflection necessary for scholars whose work aims for decoloniality. It represents our commitment to decolonization of the self.

Unmet Needs Among Out of Care and Recently Diagnosed Women of Color With HIV: Opportunities for Focused Interventions.

Women of color (WoC) have lower retention in care and higher HIV/AIDS-related morbidity, compared with other populations. Barriers to care include lack of family support, inadequate HIV/AIDS services, and stigma, and women may face greater unmet needs for services including housing and employment. This descriptive study explores the unmet needs of WoC participating in the Health Resources and Services Administration's Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program, Dissemination of Evidence Informed Interventions (HRSA/SPNS DEII) Initiative. Six urban health clinics across the United States. Eligible participants were cis- or transgender women who were newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the past 12 months, out of care for at least 6 months, or not virally suppressed. Participants enrolled from November 2016 to November 2018. Our primary outcome of interest was unmet needs at enrollment for 6 core services: housing, transportation, benefits, mental health or substance use treatment, medication assistance, and medical care. We examined differences in unmet needs stratified by participant characteristics and used multivariate regression to identify the social and health risk factors associated with higher unmet needs. Among the 529 WoC, the most frequently reported expressed needs were transportation (50.1%), housing (41.2%), benefits (28.2%), medication assistance (24.5%), and substance use or mental health treatment (24.3%). Participants with a significantly higher number of overall unmet needs included those who were older (40 years or older), were unstably housed, had a history of incarceration, identified as a transgender woman, were US born, had no caregiver responsibilities, and did not have a case manager at enrollment. Our findings indicate the importance of screening for and developing focused strategies to address the unmet needs for WoC if viral suppression is to be achieved.

Elusive Inclusion: Persistent Challenges Facing Women of Color in Political Science

Elusive Inclusion: Persistent Challenges Facing Women of Color in Political Science

Building Community and Promoting Resilience for Trainees Who Identify as Women of Color Through an Original, Resident-Led Seminar Series.

Building Community and Promoting Resilience for Trainees Who Identify as Women of Color Through an Original, Resident-Led Seminar Series.

Going Beyond Advocacy: Advancing the Participation of Women and People of Color [Amperes: Current Events From Around the World

This has been quite the year for Susanne Tedrick. February saw the launch of her first book, Women of Color in Tech , as well as being when she was awarded IBM's Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. March brought a global pandemic, quarantining her and her husband in their apartment in New York City. In May, she was appointed to the steering committee of the nonprofit NPower. June included the recognition as a Women of Color STEM Conference Technology Rising Star. Then, by September, she returned to graduate school at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Implementation of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis for women of color: Perspectives from healthcare providers and staff from three clinical settings

Women of color (WOC) account for 83% of new HIV infections among women in the United States. While pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a safe, effective HIV prevention method for women, WOC are less likely to be prescribed PrEP than other populations. Guided by an implementation science research framework, we investigated the implementation of a PrEP initiative for WOC in a US city with high HIV incidence. Across three clinical sites, only three WOC were prescribed PrEP after one year. Analysis of qualitative interviews with clinic staff and providers identified time constraints, reluctance to prescribe PrEP, and discomfort with counseling as implementation barriers. Implementation facilitators included staff and leadership support for PrEP, alignment of PrEP services with organizational missions, and having a centralized PrEP Coordinator. By addressing these identified implementation barriers and facilitators, clinic staff and providers can ensure that WOC are provided with the full range of HIV prevention options.

The correlation between undergraduate student diversity and the representation of women of color faculty in engineering

AbstractBackgroundDespite the critical role of faculty diversity in the persistence and academic experiences of undergraduate students as well as in the development of engineering innovations, women of color (WoC) faculty are still underrepresented in engineering programs across the United States.Purpose/HypothesisThis study identifies whether the demographic composition of undergraduate engineering students is correlated with the representation of WoC faculty. It also highlights the institutional‐ and departmental‐level factors that contribute to the race–gender diversification of the engineering professoriate.Design/MethodInformed by organizational demography as the theoretical framework, the methods include linear and logit regression analyses. Data come from the American Society for Engineering Education, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and the American Community Survey, and include engineering departmental‐level observations across 345 institutions over 12 years.ResultsEngineering departments that award more bachelor's degrees to women African American/Black undergraduate students are more likely to employ relatively more African American/Black women faculty. This positive relationship is also found among Asian Americans and Hispanics/Latinas.ConclusionsResearch findings demonstrate the relationship between engineering undergraduate composition, as well as other departmental‐ and institutional‐level factors, and the prevalence of WoC faculty. The findings highlight important areas for stakeholders and academic administrators to consider when developing strategies and programs to diversify the composition of engineering faculty.

Staging Womanist Visibility on Red Table Talk

In a season one episode of the web series Red Table Talk (Facebook Watch, 2018–present) titled “The Racial Divide: Women of Color and White Women,” African American actress Jada Pinkett Smith revea...

The Case for a Health at Every Size Approach for Chronic Disease Risk Reduction in Women of Color

The conventional approach to chronic disease management in women of color is a dieting-for-weight-loss approach, which has not been proven to be effective. The purpose of this article is to highlight the shortcomings of the dieting-for-weight-loss approach and demonstrate the potential efficacy of the Health at Every Size approach when working with women of color to prevent and address chronic diseases. The article's areas of focus are weight stigma, bias, and size discrimination; the implications of differing weight perceptions and motivations for change; and weight as the primary determinant of health and biological factors affecting weight.

Level Up: The Success Factors in Advancing African-American Women Into the C-Suite in Corporate America

Research shows that African-American women represent a small number of C-Suite positions in US Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 corporations. It appears that cracks are beginning to form in the glass ceiling. However, for African-American women, a barrier called the “Black Ceiling,” remains in place. Black women, who have made it, often are ending up in support positions, rather than the operational roles leading to CEO positions (McGirt, E. 2017). Research shows that having women on a company’s board of directors is associated with better financial performance, a better gender mix among senior managers and a link to greater financial results. According to Catalyst (2019), women made up 58% of all employees in the financial services industry between the years of 2007 and 2015. During that same period, women represented 48% of first/mid-level managers and 29% of executive/senior-level managers. Women of color, however, represented only 16.8% of first/mid-level managers and 4.8% of executive/senior-level managers. This research will examine how African-American women’s careers, in Mid-level and Senior-level management, have currently advanced in the financial services industry. What factors are helping African-American women experience career advancements/promotions, and, with minimal support, what would position them to be in the succession pipeline leading to the C-Suite level in the banking industry?

ULTRASOUND CONFIRMED FIBROID PREVALENCE IN A COHORT OF REPRODUCTIVE AGED LATINX FEMALES: DATA FROM THE ENVIRONMENT, LEIOMYOMAS, LATINAS, AND ADIPOSITY STUDY (ELLAS)

Fibroids are thought to be highly prevalent in women by the age of 50 with prevalence being reported as 60-70%. Women of color, specifically African-American women, have consistently been found to have a higher prevalence of fibroids than Caucasian women with prevalence as high as 89% by the age of 50. Less is known about the prevalence of fibroids in other ethnic and racial groups, including the Latina/LatinX community. The purpose of this study was to characterize fibroid prevalence among a cohort of healthy, reproductive age LatinX females from the ELLAS study.

Reproductive Health and Reproductive Justice for Muslim Women

Reproductive justice is defined as “women and girls achieving economic, social, and political power, and the resources to make healthy decisions about one's bodies, sexuality, and reproductive health for themselves and their families and their communities in all areas of [their] lives” (Zavella 2016, 1). Women of color are the targets of much prejudice in American society. (Ginsburg and Rapp 1995). Since September 11th and especially in the Trump era, Muslims continue to be “otherized” and racialized, further marginalizing Muslim women. Muslim women's reproductive health is impacted by reductive and essentialized perspective of their religious practice, a typical view held by contemporary America. Analyzing these disparities through an intersectional lens allows the researcher to confront popular essentialisms to understand the simultaneous interaction of race, class, and gender in the lives of Muslim women. Using this approach in her study of the reproductive health of African American women in Harlem, Leith Mullings (2005).identifies certain structural constraints, including political and economic factors, that cause stressors during pregnancy and health problems for both mother and child. Her findings and similar studies on Latina women beg the question: how do gender and racial discrimination, class bias, and Islamophobia affect the reproductive health of Muslim women? In this paper, I argue that intersectionality as a method and theoretical approach should be applied to Muslim women's reproductive health and reproductive justice issues, and I sketch out the beginning of an answer to that question.

Use science to stop sexual harassment in higher education

Sexual harassment abounds in academia. We know this from a 2018 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (1). As members of the committee who authored that report,* we have presented its findings to colleges and universities around the country. It has been deeply gratifying to see so many leaders want to address sexual harassment in their institutions. But according to a large body of social science evidence, the strategies that many of these same leaders are pursuing simply don’t work. Academia should lead and inspire change in other organizations. Instead, we have the highest rate of sexual harassment after the military (2). Several problems stand in the way of effective institutional response to sexual harassment: oversexualization of the problem, overreliance on fast fixes that fail to grapple with long histories of exclusion in the academy, and overemphasis on formal legal compliance. We need a radical redesign of anti-harassment efforts in higher education. This is a tall order, but decades of research can guide this work and brave leaders can implement it. The term “sexual harassment” is largely a misnomer. Most sexual harassment entails disrespect, not desire, and certainly not romance (3). There are the occasional come-ons: unwanted sexual advances, touches, kisses, or bribes and threats used to coerce sexual activity. But by far the most prevalent form of sexual harassment is the put-down, or what social scientists call gender harassment : comments, cartoons, jokes, gestures, and other insults to members of one sex/gender group (4, 5). Sometimes the put-downs are sexually degrading and crude, and other times they are contemptuous without sexual content. Women of color are likely to experience harassment that is based in both race and gender stereotypes (6). For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, harassment often includes comments … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: kclancy{at}illinois.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

The association of cannabis use late in pregnancy with engagement and retention in perinatal substance use disorder care for opioid use disorder: A cohort comparison

BackgroundPrenatal use of cannabis and opioids are increasing and very concerning. Engagement and retention in comprehensive, perinatal substance use disorder (PSUD) care are associated with better outcomes for mothers and babies. We compared the characteristics and engagement in care among women with opioid use disorder who used cannabis late in pregnancy versus those who didn't. MethodsThe primary outcome, “overall engagement and retention in PSUD care” included: utilization of substance use treatment prenatally, negative screening/toxicology at delivery (excluding cannabis), and attendance at expected prenatal and postpartum visits. Cannabis use late in pregnancy was objectively assessed at delivery via maternal urine drug screen and/or neonatal meconium/cord toxicology. Between-group comparisons utilized chi square, t-test or Mann-Whitney. Associations were assessed using Spearman Rho and two multivariate, binary logistic regressions for cannabis use and the primary outcome. Results18.0% (85/472) consumed cannabis late in pregnancy. Women of color, younger women, and those diagnosed with concurrent cannabis use disorder were more likely to consume cannabis. Engagement and retention in PSUD care was not associated with cannabis use, but rather, with prescribed pharmacotherapy for psychiatric disorders. The use of prescribed buprenorphine+naloxone was associated with cannabis avoidance late in pregnancy. ConclusionsCannabis use late in pregnancy, compared to none, did not impact engagement and retention in our PSUD program. Adjunctive psychotropic medication and/or buprenorphine+naloxone prescription were associated with cannabis avoidance suggesting the use and interactions of pharmacotherapies in an opioid dependent population is complex. A shared decision-making process during PSUD care is warranted.

The Bio/Necropolitics of ACTG 076: Lessons from Pregnant Women of Colour Living with HIV for Treatment for Prevention in the Twenty-first Century

Since the pharmaceutical turn, using HIV treatment to prevent transmission is increasingly common. Treatment as Prevention®, or TasP, has relied on HIV treatment to prevent HIV transmission, targeting people living with HIV. However, TasP is predicated on troublesome heterosexist, classist, and racist medical practices borrowed from various times and spaces that enact biopolitical and necropolitical relations. This paper discusses the debate surrounding the first clinical trial that used HIV treatment to prevent transmission from woman-to-foetus. The 1994 landmark AIDS Clinical Trials Group 076 study laid the groundwork for using HIV treatment to prevent HIV transmission, the essential precursor to TasP. By examining the concerns of HIV positive women of colour and other AIDS activists, we are able to understand the ethical dilemmas and practical consequences that still haunt today's game-changing uses of HIV treatment for prevention and to see how biopolitics and necropolitics persist in TasP.

Informal Borrowers and Financial Exclusion: The Invisible Unbanked at the Intersections of Race and Gender

Previous work has found that predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods continue to have less access to mainstream financial services and a greater prevalence of high-cost alternatives. Less attention has been dedicated to the other financial tools available to financially excluded households. Borrowing from friends and family is one widely used yet under-examined strategy for coping with emergency expenses. The literature provides preliminary evidence that informal borrowing and the costs of such borrowing are unequally distributed by race and gender. Drawing on data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, this article identifies predictors of planned informal borrowing use and examines whether this borrowing is symptomatic of financial exclusion using a bivariate probit model. Women of color are disproportionately likely to plan on using informal borrowing as their sole strategy for coping with an emergency expense. Black women in particular are twice as likely to do so as White respondents. While this informality occurs among the banked and unbanked, unobserved factors such as limited access to bank branches link financial exclusion and informal borrowing.

Propose Dissertation Topic: College Students Who Are Black Women or Women of Color and How They Cope With Stress

There are several studies relating to the mental health of college students. However, over the years, the assistance, in which these students receive help is very different depending on their race.

Using targeting to recruit men and women of color into a behavioral weight loss trial

BackgroundThe majority of participants in weight loss trials are non-Hispanic White women, while men and women of color are underrepresented. This study presents data obtained from non-targeted and targeted recruitment approaches in a trial of behavioral weight loss programs to (1) describe the yields from each approach and (2) compare the demographics, weight control histories, and study involvement of samples recruited by each approach.MethodsData for this observational study include source of recruitment, demographic information, weight loss experiences (e.g., lifetime weight loss, current weight loss behaviors), and completion of the 6-month assessment visit.ResultsMen comprised 14.2% of participants who responded to non-targeted recruitment efforts, while targeted efforts yielded 50.4% men. Similarly, people of color comprised 12.8% of those who responded to non-targeted approaches, whereas targeted recruitment methods yielded 47.2% people of color. Men recruited through targeted methods were younger (p = 0.01) than men recruited through non-targeted means but were otherwise similar. Women of color recruited through targeted methods reported use of fewer weight loss strategies relative to women of color recruited through non-targeted means (p = 0.006) but were otherwise similar. There were no differences by recruitment method on retention to the study.ConclusionsUsing targeted recruitment methods increased the ethnic and gender diversity of the recruited sample without reducing study retention. This targeting also increased the enrollment of women with less weight loss experience who may not have otherwise sought out a weight loss program. Developing and implementing a targeted recruitment plan should be considered early in the clinical trial development process.Trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov, NCT02368002. Registered on 20 February 2015.

Gabriel D and Tate S (eds), Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in British Academia

Gabriel D and Tate S (eds), <i>Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in British Academia</i>