The contribution of a gender perspective to the understanding of migrants' health.
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.
Llácer
Alicia
A
Centro Nacional de Epidemiología, c/Sinesio Delgado no 6 (pabellón 12), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 28029 Madrid, Spain. allacer@isciii.es
Zunzunegui
María Victoria
MV
del Amo
Julia
J
Mazarrasa
Lucía
L
Bolumar
Francisco
F
D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D012737:Sex Factors; D014171:Transients and Migrants / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016387:Women's Health