An intersectional approach to Men's Health

Abstract

Men's lives and health are rooted in opportunity structures that are shaped by race, ethnicity and other characteristics that have important social, political, economic and cultural meaning. Within men's health, there is a need to consider how structural factors and men's socially-defined characteristics affect the relationship between sex, gender and health. The goal of an intersectional approach is to simultaneously examine the social and health effects of several key aspects of identity and context in ways that create a new understanding of these factors and that are a more accurate reflection of the lived experiences of the populations of interest. Despite their promise, intersectional approaches have been criticized for being difficult to operationalize and study systematically. This paper, however, presents a framework for studying the intersection of gender and other identities and characteristics that are relevant for men's health, and explicitly identifies key pathways and stratification variables to guide future research.

This framework highlights pathways and ways to think about why race, gender, age and ethnicity affect men's health, and offers a tool for studying the relationship between socially-defined characteristics and men's health. Future research on men's health should begin by recognizing that comparing how men experience and embody masculinities may be most useful when researchers are explicit about their assumptions and theories about what and how socially-defined characteristics intersect with gender in a given national and local context. Research employing an intersectional approach also may elucidate how men of specific population groups create new normative masculinities for themselves.