Indigenous Women's Rights

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Pages: 8

Currently, Indigenous women are marginalized and face several conflicts as a cultural minority in comparison to non-Indigenous people (Hanson 2009). In many ways, Indigenous women’s rights are impeded, including their reproductive rights and autonomy and are marginalized in health care (Mann 2013). With this in mind, I pose the following question, how are Indigenous women’s rights and dignities protected and marginalized in the health care system of Canada in terms of their reproductive health and well-being? In this literature review, I have read two articles on this topic, in which one is titled “Regionalization as an Opportunity for Meaningful Indigenous Participation in Healthcare: Comparing Canada and New Zealand” and the other article, …show more content…
Additionally, this article entails the problem of intersectionality for Indigenous women. To clarify, Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality is the idea that an individual can be marginalized by more than one aspect of their status such as age, race and gender (Crenshaw 1989). That is to say, Indigenous women face marginalization due to their status as women and as Indigenous women (Crenshaw 1989). Subsequently, this can be supported by the first-peer-reviewed article that claims Indigenous people lack participation in health policy-making and do not have access to health care services, unlike their non-indigenous counterparts who have access to free healthcare (Lavoie, Boulton and Gervais 2012; Mann 2013). Further, the second article elaborates on the barriers associated with reproductive health services for Indigenous teens which are inflicted by the lack of cultural context in health care as the article argues (Mann 2013). The research of this article provides more in-depth results due to the information produced to be qualitative more than quantitative (Mann 2013). For instance, the article uses a triangulation method of research resulting information such as lack of education and culture marginalization like prejudice causing teens to be reluctant to seek health care services and instead prefer traditional practices (United Nations Development Fund for Women [UNIFEM], n.d.). From this article, the following question came to mind, what can be done to solve the social problems that Indigenous women face in terms of their reproductive health? Furthermore, I have learned from the article that due to the circumstances of Indigenous people and they face different hardships that non-Indigenous people do not face. Also, why are Indigenous people especially women marginalized in the healthcare sector? These are questions I ask in response to my research