Journal of Social Issues最新文献

Vaccine hesitancy is variable across individuals and contexts. Theoretical work suggests that group membership should differentially affect attitudes and behavior related to COVID-19 vaccines, as individuals draw on their identities and experiences relevant to their social groups to deal with uncertainty concerning the vaccines. The present work uses longitudinal survey data to explore how identity predicted vaccination attitudes in the U.S. before COVID-19 vaccines were widely available and which role-based or contextual variables influenced early vaccination decisions. We replicate these patterns in hesitancy with a larger and more racially diverse sample and identify whether encouragement from people with shared identities was important when participants made the decision to be vaccinated. Before the vaccines were widely available, higher SES predicted less hesitancy toward the COVID-19 vaccines, while being Black and/or having more conservative political orientation predicted more hesitancy. More conservative political orientation was a predictor of vaccine hesitancy across racial identities. While rationale for mistrust may vary by identity, vaccine trust is a significant predictor of early vaccination, and it is influenced by local norms surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines. Encouragement from shared group members was more important for women, liberal individuals, and younger individuals in making the decision to be vaccinated.

In addition to the pervasive anti-Black racism faced by Black people in the United States, Black men who have sex with men (BMSM) face sexual minority stigma and, among BMSM living with HIV, HIV-related stigma. These multilevel social forces shape social networks, which are important sources of resources, support, and behavior regulation. This study quantitatively examined the relationship between social network characteristics and sexual minority stigma (e.g., homophobia, biphobia), assessed by reported concerns around disclosing one's sexual minority status, among BMSM in Baltimore, Maryland in 2014 (N = 336). A majority of participants (63.7%) reported experiencing medium or high levels of sexual minority disclosure concern. In a multiple linear regression model, participants with higher sexual minority disclosure concerns reported lower network density and fewer good friends who are gay or bisexual men. Stratifying the same multiple linear regression model by HIV status supports the importance of an intersectional understanding of sexual minority and HIV-related stigma. These findings can help health-related programs address the complex relationships between sexual minority stigma, social networks, and HIV status within this multiply-marginalized and high-priority population.

Children are not responsible for diseases, natural disasters, political conflicts, and wars; yet, children generally suffer the most. Although the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is one of the most ratified world treaties, ample evidence of violations of children's rights exists in reports on the devastating effects of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and armed conflicts (e.g., Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen) including abuse, abduction, becoming child soldiers, death, early marriages, family separation, loss of schooling, malnutrition, neglect, poverty, sexual violence, and trafficking, leading to traumatic short- and long-term academic, emotional, psychological, and physical consequences. This article highlights a child-rights based approach to the global crisis: (1) sounding an alarm for immediate and greater attention of governments to address children's rights violations and (2) calling multi-disciplinary scholars to redouble their efforts toward freely sharing their findings, partnering with policy makers and stakeholders, collecting difficult to obtain data, and putting their knowledge into action in preventive and intervention measures to empower the implementation of children's protection and participation rights in the home, school, community, nation, and globally. The global multi-faceted children's rights crisis requires urgent individual and collective action to make children's rights a global reality.

The association between stigma and adverse interpersonal outcomes is well established. However, the mechanisms underlying this association have yet to be comprehensively conceptualized and tested, in part because research has neglected to evaluate stigma across multiple levels. To address this gap, we examined whether stigma—measured at individual, interpersonal, and structural levels—prospectively affects loneliness and social support by thwarting fundamental belonging needs, using a longitudinal sample of 315 gay men. Results indicated that thwarted belonging needs prospectively mediated the association between interpersonal discrimination, internalized homonegativity, and concealment motivation and changes in loneliness and lack of social support. When indirect pathways were tested simultaneously, discrimination was uniquely associated with reductions in social support via thwarted belonging needs. In addition, the prospective association between objectively-measured structural stigma (at the state and county levels) and loneliness and lack of social support was serially mediated by perceptions of structural stigma and thwarted belonging needs. To guide future work, we propose a model outlining pathways by which stigma, across multiple levels, may lead to adverse interpersonal outcomes by increasing relationally-oriented biological, motivational, cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms that affect belonging needs.

In 2020, COVID-19 in tandem with racial tensions spurred by various occurrences throughout the nation proved detrimental to minoritized persons. Black women, who are often the heads of households, familial and communal caregivers, and organizers, were tasked with protecting themselves, their families, and their communities from racialized violence and infection. This article explores the idea of safety and the responsibilities of Black women to ensure, secure, and maintain safety. The intersection of these two forces creates dual inequities. Whether sacrificing safety for the sake of racial equality or experiencing medical racism while seeking treatment for COVID-19, the duality of Being black and a woman during two prevalent threats exacerbate existing inequities. Using symbolic interactionism to illustrate the function of structures and roles in defining Black women's positionality and intersectionality to examine the policies and systems that act on the lives of these women, we discuss the ways in which Black women created safety for themselves and their families at the intersection of both threats emphasizing the inequity in home, health, and financial outcomes among Black women.

By magnifying gender- and socioeconomic status-based inequalities, the COVID-19 pandemic caused stress and disrupted career progress for professional students. The present work investigated the impact of pandemic-related stress and prevailing barriers on structurally disadvantaged women preparing for a high-stakes professional exam. In Study 1, we found that among US law students preparing for the October 2020 California Bar Exam—the professional exam that enables one to become a practicing attorney in California—first-generation women reported the greatest stress from pandemic-related burdens and underperformed on the exam relative to others overall, and particularly compared to continuing-generation women. This underperformance was explained by pandemic-related stress they contended with most, as well as by structural demands shouldered most by first-generation test-takers regardless of gender. Even when controlling for the structural features of caregiving and working while studying, the psychological burdens experienced most by first-generation women predicted lower exam success. Study 2 investigated the February 2021 California Bar Exam. Consistent with Study 1, first-generation women test-takers reported the most pandemic-related stress, which predicted lower exam performance above and beyond structural barriers to exam success. We offer policy prescriptions to bolster the success of at-risk groups in the legal profession pipeline, a challenge magnified by the pandemic.

Intergenerational contact is crucial for promoting intergenerational harmony and reducing ageism. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted and changed the nature and frequency of intergenerational contact. In addition, research suggests that both ageism towards older adults and intergenerational threat regarding succession and consumption, have increased. Through the lens of the Temporally Integrated Model of Intergroup Contact and Threat (TIMICAT; Abrams & Eller, 2016), we explore the implications of these changing dynamics on ageism towards older adults during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Our review reveals that research into intergenerational contact needs to articulate both the time course and salience of contact and threats before making predictions about their impacts on prejudice. The implications of understanding how contact and threat combine to affect ageism for policy and practice are discussed in relation to employment, education, and intergenerational contact programs. We highlight that policy makers play a key role in promoting intergenerational harmony through the reduction of narratives that inflame intergenerational tensions and threat.

An organized response to sexual harassment (SH) in K-12 schools in the US traces its development as a social movement to the larger women's rights movement in the late 1970s. It was an outgrowth of the social movement of feminist activists who protested and filed lawsuits to draw attention to SH in the workplace to gain recognition for the problem as one of equity for working women. The focus on SH in K-12 schools did not begin as an academic pursuit or with an emphasis on research – rather shares its origins as an activist movement to rectify injustices. Authors document the unwritten history of this social movement, by examining the early roots to address and prevent SH in K-12 schools. The authors review survey and intervention research from the initial movement through the past couple of decades, noting limitations and challenges for future efforts to prevent and eliminate SH in K-12 schools. The role of youth activism in advancing the movement against SH in schools represents hope of a renewal of activism with a robust gendered perspective. Authors provide next steps for research and action.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple groups faced increased risks for negative health and mortality. Using an intersectional framework, the current study explores how the global pandemic impacted lower-income women living in the United States through access to housing. Findings indicate several challenges  remaining stably housed during the pandemic. Major themes included: (1) High-Risk Survival Economies, (2) Landlord Stress, Deception, and Exclusion, (3) Landlord Harassment, (4) Low Levels of Formal and Informal Support, (5) Housing as a Health Risk Factor, and (6) Resilience. These themes are explored through four in-depth narrative accounts. Implications for health and policy are discussed. Future research that examines and engages with both direct (e.g., material scarcity) and indirect (e.g., discrimination) pathways that connect housing to health are strongly encouraged.