Using feminist and social structural analysis to focus on the health of poor women.

Poverty results in both personal and structural deprivation for women. Health status and health care are intimately affected by this deprivation. As a result, the increasing rates of poverty among women have serious immediate and long-term consequences for their overall health status. Feminist and social structural analyses are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of poor women's health. Critical to these perspectives is the premise that the underlying structure of American society has produced a social stratification system that has grossly unequalized life chances for poor women. This inequity deleteriously affects poor women's health behaviors, health outcomes, and the health care delivery services that are accessible to them. An adequate understanding of poor women's health calls for an in-depth examination of health and behavior and the social contextual framework within which they occur, taking into account poor women's position in society, the communities in which they live, and the stressful life events they experience.