User:EmilyFreg19/sandbox

The organization that I will be doing my Practice Experience with is Mujeres Aliadas. Mujeres Aliadas is based in Erongarícuaro, Michoacán. The work of the organization is centered around promoting holistic sexual and reproductive healthcare services and education for womxn in Mexico. I will be specifically working in the Youth Education Program and focus on outreaching to the youth in Erongaricuaro and community accessible initiatives on sexual healthcare.

Area
Purépecha

This article provides background information on the Purépecha people in that state of Michoacan. It provides a very brief history about them as well as discusses the local culture. There is little research done on the Purépecha but I plan on including a paragraph after the "Language" section to provide context on the socioeconomic disadvantages of the indigenous community.

Sector
Reproductive rights in Latin America

This article gives a thorough overview of how reproductive justice looks like in Latin America. It describes the social, health, religious, and political factors that go into reproductive healthcare for Latin American womxn. In this article, I would want to add a section on how race plays a role in ways certain sectors of the female population are faced with additional challenges regarding reproductive healthcare.

Article Evaluation
Reproductive rights in Latin America

This article does a quality job at explaining what the fight for reproductive rights is like in Latin America. It explains what the feminist wave in Latin America works towards for reproductive rights, such as policy creation and access to emergency contraceptives. It also discusses larger efforts for quality reproductive healthcare, such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization, and how initiatives created by these organizations are taking effect in Latin American countries. I would want to create an additional section on how the greater reproductive healthcare issues and statistics manifest in the everyday life of Latin American womxn and contribute to their impoverishment.

Area
"Or, Indigenous Women in Colonial Mexico."

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=3467

This article discusses the social inequalities of indigenous womxn during the colonial era in Mexico and describes how these inequalities continue to manifest today, just in different forms.

“National Law and Indigenous Customary Law: The struggle for justice of indigenous women in Chiapas, Mexico”

This scholarly article is about how Mexico, a declared multicultural nation, leaves its indigenous population without tangible support and often on the main political agenda, pro-indigenous policy is detrimental to the population a lot of times. It also focuses on the sociological perspective of the lives on indigenous womxn and how cultural, indigenous activism, and neoliberal politics affect the way indigenous womxn navigate the world and struggle to gain liberation. It ties the entire essay together with an analysis and criticism that Western academia does not give full justice to indigenous lives because of the fact that many direct indigenous information is disregarded because it does not fit in the paradigm of Western academia. This source is essential to my research and future application during my practice because it is one of the few scholarly resources that centers and amplifies the direct concerns and struggles of indigenous folk and womxn from the perspective of an indigenous person. This will allow me to hear from a similar perspective of the population I will later be serving, and I can make future connections to my real life application during my practice.

“Indigenous Women of Colonial Mexico”

The main argument in this essay is on how indigenous womxn in Mexico are wrongfully portrayed and misconceptualized by Western academia and historical accounts. The essay expands on the ways indigenous womxn played roles in colonial society, what position they were placed in society according to colonial regime, and the ways colonialism continues to manifest to this day and how it continues to keep indigenous womxn oppressed. This is important for both my research and for future application during my practice experience because the article helps me understand why indigenous womxn are low on the socio-economic ladder and general place in Mexican society. I will have background knowledge of the systems of oppression that were established during the colonial period in Mexico and how that actively contributes to the oppression of indigenous Mexican womxn.

“Unintended consequences: Exploring the tensions between development programs and indigenous women in Mexico in the context of reproductive health”

This article focuses on how reproductive health politics and policies have specifically affected indigenous womxn in Mexico. It describes how indigenous womxn have been constrained or limited with regards to their personal decisison regarding their reproductive health because of discriminatory policies imposed by the government. From this article, I will learn exactly the obstables and barriers indigenous womxn face in Mexico and how it contributes to the inequality of their healthcare. This article shows the racism and sexism embedded within these policies and how they directly affect indigenous womxn.

"Community-based health care for indigenous women in Mexico: a qualitative evaluation."

This piece covers the study made by Casa de la Mujer Indigena, where four Cases were placed in four separate states in Mexico. The goal of this study was to provide healthcare services and health education by indigenous healthcare workers for indigenous womxn, serve as a bridge to mainstream healthcare services in Mexico, and where local leaders in the indigenous community can come together and plan how to tackle the various intersecting issues indigenous womxn face. The model study was able to analyze how when services like healthcare are provided to marginalized communities by providers who share the same cultural identity as their patients, it allows for a greater connection between the patient and the provider, an increased sense of trust and honesty, and overall reaches out to those who most need help in marginalized communities.

“Family Planning Advice and Postpartum Contraceptive Use among Low-Income Women in Mexico”

This article is on the study on how the integration of family planning services and education in prenatal and postpartum care has some effect on the usage uptake of contraception by the individual who needed the services. This ties in with my research because one of the most impoverished sector of the Mexican population is indigenous womxn. The study concludes that integrating family planning services into prenatal care leads many indigenous womxn to increase their usage of condoms, IUDs, and receiving sterilization. Although the accessibility of family planning services is important, I am wary of the intent of this because it was also completed in collaboration with the Mexican government who had hopes of also decreasing the population with this effort. Because the study had a focus on low-income womxn in Mexico, it targets the most vulnerable.

“Assessing Equitable Care for Indigenous and Afrodescendant Women in Latin America”

This piece discusses the multi-layered and complex oppression of indigenous and afrolatinx womxn in Latin America and how it manifests in the healthcare setting. Indigenous and afrolatinx womxn face extreme discrimination in the healthcare industry, coming in forms of diminishing pain and experience, abuse in all forms by healthcare providers, etc. In addition to rising costs, this discourages thousands of womxn who need quality care the most to be hesitant to come back to healthcare facilities. The remainder of the study focuses on methods to approach this discrimination.

Sector
Linscott, Margaret. "An Analysis of Public and Feminist Rhetoric for Menstrual Equity"

This article discusses the inaccessibility of menstrual products in the public sphere. It describes how lack of accessible menstrual products contributes to the continuous poverty cycle of young girls and womxn of color.

“Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health in Developing Countries: An Overview of Trends and Interventions”

This essay is focused on the disparities of sexual and reproductive health education within adolescent folk in second and third world countries. It showcases the exact details and data for the ages of adolescents in various regions and when their sexual activity begins to peak up. It shows how adolescents are as young as 13 and because of lack of resources and education opportunities in poorer areas, all adolescents suffer from poor sexual and reproductive health issues and false education. It discusses why issues like early pregnancy and marriage and rapid STI spread are common in second and third world countries. This study provides information on the lack of resources that countries like these face and how that affects their greater populations, especially the most marginalized. This will help me in the future because I will be working specifically in the Youth Education Program, where I will see the studies of my academia in the real world. I will see how adolescents are often faced with inequitable healthcare services. This will also help expand my worldview and I can gain a general understanding of what underserved adolescents in other countries are challenged with in their daily lives. This will help me become a better volunteer in my capacity.

“Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice”

The book as a whole surrounds the theme of reproductive justice and the unique obstacles womxn of color face regarding reproductive health and the rises and falls of their efforts for liberation in this aspect of their lives over time. For this assignment, I am specifically  only utilizing research from the “We Will No Longer Be Silent or Invisible: Latinas Organizing for Reproductive Justice” and “The National Latina Health Organization” essays within this book. Both articles discuss the healthcare of latinas in North America and Mexico and the strides made within their community to fix the problems regarding reproductive justice. These articles help me overall because the populations centered in the essays are in close relation to the populations I will be serving when going on my Practice Experience. Both articles also allow me to explore the deeper issues regarding the disparties Latinx/Chicanx/Indigenous womxn face in reproductive health. I will then gain a better understanding of the root causes of the issues at hand and understand how their physical manifestations come about.

“Sexual and reproductive health and rights in Latin America: an analysis of trends, commitments, and achievements”

This article is particularly research heavy and focuses on objective information regarding sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America. It gathers information from the rights; the socioeconomic context; national and international law and policy; health systems, services and programmes; the opposition; the perceived high costs of political support; the role of civil society, NGO networks and coalitions; and development aid, donor policy and government funding. The point is to ultimately argue that young men and womxn in Latin America are having higher rates of unprotected sex, higher rates of STIs, and that there is little sexual education in middle and high school. This leads to the spread of sexual healthcare issues, and combatted with social characteristics like widespread Catholicism and poverty, why they occur. This will give me more concrete information regarding reproductive justice in Latin America and what the literal disparities are. This will supplement a lot of the other information I am getting from other sources that are mainly general ideas, general stances, and history. I will be able to have a more holistic approach to my practice by adding this information to my research.

Pragmatic Women and Body Politics

This book includes a plethora of responses from womxn around the world on gender-based medical issues, from exploring the infertility challenges in Africa to prenatal care in the US. It discusses a wide ray of topics, from the emergence of counter efforts made, coinciding efforts in the reproductive fight, and reactions to environmental hazards. It discusses how women react pragmatically to medical services and the consequences of this in various forms. Overall, the book highlights the plethora of issues womxn face in healthcare all throughout the world and how these issues are connected.

“Indigenous Women of Latin America: Unintended Pregnancy, Unsafe Abortion, and Reproductive Health Outcomes”

This article focuses on how research regarding the experiences of indigenous womxn and healthcare is significantly under-researched. Indigenous womxn face some of the most discrimination in the healthcare field, have higher rates of infant immortality, and higher chances of unwanted pregnancies resulting from sexual violence. This article focuses on how the encouragement of further analysis and research of this population would result in more programming actions.

"Cultural aspects related to the health of Andean women in Latin America: A key issue for progress toward the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals"

This article is about how indigenous womxn in Latin America face continuous discrimination in healthcare and how an intercultural approach can alleviate the barriers faced by these womxn. This study is in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization. The study analyzes how a cultural approach to healthcare can build a bridge between the greater healthcare system in Latin American and indigenous womxn as this will encourage trust, representation, and quality individualized care.

Area
While researching for my Area section, I noticed that there was a lot of overlap between the sources I was finding in terms of the material in it. The sources I have found discuss the main ways indigenous womxn are discriminated in the Latin American healthcare system due to sexism, racism, and classism however, there is little research on the healthcare needs of indigenous womxn and how to provide them with access to healthcare services. Although with what the articles do provide me with, I am able to piece together the common experiences, traumas, and barriers faced by indigenous womxn in healthcare.

Sector
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, there was a lot of overlap found in the scholarly sources. Coincidentally, while researching for sources for my Sector section I found an article that explained that there currently exists little information specifically on indigenous women's reproductive healthcare. This helped explain a lot, and made sense as to why finding articles for my Sector was much easier. I found articles on the broader fight for reproductive justice for womxn of color and many sources on why "cultural awareness" in healthcare allows for more progress when it comes to reaching out to marginalized communities.

Area
- Added to article "Purépecha" underneath "Language" section

- Title: "Brief Sociological Context"

- "The Purépecha people in Michoacan have low socioeconomic mobility. It is not common for individuals to go to school past the sixth grade roughly and there is very little accessible healthcare services. The Purépecha folk rely heavily on fishing for their substance as well as tourism in the area. There remains little research about the Purépecha people so thus, there are little available resources to provide the people with. Indigenous peoples in Mexico are part of the lowest socioeconomic classes and unfortunately, the Purépecha people are challenged with a lot of the systemic oppressions that face indigenous peoples overall."

Sector
- Added to article "Reproductive rights in Latin America" below "Family Planning" section

- Title: "Disproportionate Effects of Reproductive Injustice"

- "In Latin America, indigenous womxn lie at the intersection of various systems of oppression in place. Indigenous womxn are discriminated based upon their ethnicity, their gender, and because indigenous folk are the poorest sector of the overall population, indigenous womxn are also discriminated upon their income and class. In the healthcare industry, discrimination can manifest in forms of diminishing pain and experience, abuse in all forms by healthcare providers, to medical mistreatment. With the costs of reproductive healthcare constantly on the rise within Latin America, this creates additional inaccessibility for hundreds of indigenous womxn. There also remains very little medical research or representation for indigenous folk within the healthcare field and this creates distrust and miscommunication between the healthcare providers and the indigenous patients."