
          Findings from U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, A Growing
Crisis: Disadvantaged Women and Their Children, May
1983.
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 5, No. 5, 1983, p. 19
          
          
             In its 1982 report on health insurance coverage and employment
for minorities and women, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights noted
that black, Hispanic, and other minority women were disproportionately
without any type of insurance coverage in case of illness. The report
found that because of continuing discrimination in employment, many
minorities and women are not found in those groups normally insured by
private insurance companies. Noting that the insurance industry is not
adequately equipped to meet the needs of these minorities and women,
the report endorsed passage of national health insurance
legislation.
             Minority women and children have extraordinarily high rates of
morbidity and mortality. For example, in 1979 black women had a
maternal mortality rate about four times that of white women and their
children were twice as likely to die as white infants. The substantial
differences in maternal mortality and infant mortality between groups
and differences in utilization of services suggest that significant
barriers to good health exist that are not related to differences in
need.
             Disadvantaged women, particularly minority women, suffer from
a variety of health problems associated with poverty and, in some
instances, their race or ethnicity. Disadvantaged black women have
higher rates of breast and cervical cancer than other groups. Among
Hispanic women, who make up a large proportion of the migrant worker
population, health problems are compounded by exposure to potentially
harmful pesticides, debilitating living environments, and little or no
access to health care. Poor, rural, white women have health care
problems compounded by the extreme deprivations of poverty,
poor-sanitation and malnutrition.
             Significant barriers to health care confronting disadvantaged
women are (1) lack of a regular primary source of care for routine
services; (2) language and cultural differences for Hispanic women;
(3) the cost of health care; and (4) inadequate transportation to
facilities relocated outside of inner cities.
             Research documents that the medical establishment tends to
diagnose a majority of female complaints as psychosomatic while
treating the complaints of male patients more seriously. This has led
to a tendency to overprescribe drugs to women more than to men,
particularly mood-modifying drugs.
             Poverty, particularly when linked with single parenthood, poor
education, and the presence of young children, is a major cause of
emotional stress. Stress can elicit destructive responses, such as
alcoholism, drug abuse, depressive violence, and various forms of
mental illness. Disadvantaged women living in poverty experience
higher lovers of stress than other subgroups.
             Disadvantaged children have a greater susceptibility to
serious health complications than other children. Poor children are
also less likely to receive immunizations against dangerous childhood
diseases or have routine checkups than are their peers.
          
          For many black, white, and Hispanic women. poverty means inadequate
and infrequent use of medical services, reduced employment
opportunities, and increased household responsibilities. Children,
when their mothers live in poverty, run an increased risk of birth
defects and malnutrition and subsist in an environment that could
interfere with education and future employability.
          As more and more women and children enter the ranks of the
impoverished, the implications for the future of our society become
overwhelming. To ignore these implications is unconscionable
negligence. The bodies, minds, and spirits of millions of women and
children are being inevitably and ineluctably affected by the
dispiriting hand of poverty.
        