Structural inequalities in Health

Question 1

Define social structures

Answer 1

The policies, economic systems and other institutions that have produced and maintained modern social inequalities as well as health disparities, often along the lines of social categories such as race, class, gender and sexuality.

Question 2

What is structural violence?

Answer 2

Social arrangments that put individuals and populations in harms ways.
Embedded in the political and economic organisation of our social world.

Question 3

Define structural vulnerability

Answer 3

The risk that an individual experiences as a result of structural violence - including their location in multiple socioeconomic hierarchies.
Is not due to the individual agency or behaviour.

Question 4

Define naturalising inequality.

Answer 4

The process when inequality and structural violence and justified by, or go unacknowledged due to non structural explanation for structurally mediated harm/inequaties.
These non structural explanations of the emphasise individual behaviours, cultural characteristics or racial categories.
Suggests status quo is natural.