IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v289y2021ics0277953621006808.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dropdown rights: Categorizing transgender discrimination in healthcare technologies

Author

Listed:
  • Kirkland, Anna

Abstract

This study analyzes how U.S. healthcare organizations implemented legal requirements to treat patients in a manner consistent with their gender identity under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The ways that healthcare organizations determine gender and track complaints constitute socio-technical systems for compliance, and they shape what discrimination protections look like on the ground. We interviewed grievance handlers about how they use information technologies to process possible civil rights claims from patients and argue that their work demobilizes and erases civil rights, especially claims such as transgender harassment. Mobilized physician-led implementation groups, by contrast, enacted a version of gender identity recognition by tracking identities and bodies in electronic medical records and material objects such as specimen labels. Default structures—the dropdown menus of healthcare software—both shape and are shaped by professional norms, financial incentives, and conceptions of justice and deservingness. These socio-technical structures allow conflicting stories of transgender rights to continue on in different parts of the healthcare organization, making it difficult for law to transform healthcare delivery.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirkland, Anna, 2021. "Dropdown rights: Categorizing transgender discrimination in healthcare technologies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 289(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:289:y:2021:i:c:s0277953621006808
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621006808
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114348?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. shuster, stef m., 2019. "Performing informed consent in transgender medicine," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 190-197.
    2. Berrey, Ellen, 2015. "The Enigma of Diversity," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226246062, September.
    3. Morse, Jaimie, 2019. "Legal mobilization in medicine: Nurses, rape kits, and the emergence of forensic nursing in the United States since the 1970s," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 323-334.
    4. Pryma, Jane, 2017. "“Even my sister says I'm acting like a crazy to get a check”: Race, gender, and moral boundary-work in women's claims of disabling chronic pain," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 66-73.
    5. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226246239 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Levitsky, Sandra R., 2014. "Caring for Our Own: Why There is No Political Demand for New American Social Welfare Rights," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199993130, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Milena Doytcheva, 2021. "Diversity as Immigration Governmentality: Insights from France," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-19, June.
    2. Baumgart-McFarland, Madison & Chiarello, Elizabeth & Slay, Tayla, 2022. "Reluctant Saviors: Professional ambivalence, cultural imaginaries, and deservingness construction in naloxone provision," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    3. Brewer, Alexandra, 2018. "“We were on our own”: Mothers' experiences navigating the fragmented system of professional care for autism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 61-68.
    4. Clair, Matthew & Daniel, Caitlin & Lamont, Michèle, 2016. "Destigmatization and health: Cultural constructions and the long-term reduction of stigma," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 223-232.
    5. Pablo Mendez, 2018. "Encounters with difference in the subdivided house: The case of secondary suites in Vancouver," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(6), pages 1274-1289, May.
    6. Dassieu, Lise & Kaboré, Jean-Luc & Choinière, Manon & Arruda, Nelson & Roy, Élise, 2020. "Painful lives: Chronic pain experience among people who use illicit drugs in Montreal (Canada)," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 246(C).
    7. Seaman, Aaron T., 2018. "The consequence of “doing nothing”: Family caregiving for Alzheimer's disease as non-action in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 63-70.
    8. Murawsky, Stef, 2023. "The struggle with transnormativity: Non-binary identity work, embodiment desires, and experience with gender dysphoria," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    9. Merav Kaddar, 2020. "Gentrifiers and attitudes towards agency: A new typology. Evidence from Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(6), pages 1243-1259, May.
    10. Ela, Nate, 2018. "Use-Based Welfare: Property Experiments in Chicago, 1895-1935," SocArXiv 5qpa6, Center for Open Science.
    11. Bloeser, Katharine & McCarron, Kelly K. & Merker, Vanessa L. & Hyde, Justeen & Bolton, Rendelle E. & Anastasides, Nicole & Petrakis, Beth Ann & Helmer, Drew A. & Santos, Susan & Litke, David & Pigeon,, 2021. "“Because the country, it seems though, has turned their back on me”: Experiences of institutional betrayal among veterans living with Gulf War Illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    12. Anderson-Gough, Fiona & Edgley, Carla & Robson, Keith & Sharma, Nina, 2022. "Organizational responses to multiple logics: Diversity, identity and the professional service firm," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    13. Harold Braswell, 2017. "From Disability Rights to the Rights of the Dying (and Back Again)," Laws, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-17, December.
    14. Peter Francis Harvey, 2023. "“Everyone Thinks They’re Special†: How Schools Teach Children Their Social Station," American Sociological Review, , vol. 88(3), pages 493-521, June.
    15. Andrew Riely, 2020. "Gentrifiers, distinction, and social preservation: A case study in consumption on Mount Pleasant Street in Washington, DC," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(12), pages 2383-2401, September.
    16. Altomonte, Guillermina, 2022. "Coordinating illness and insurance trajectories: Evidence from a post-acute care unit," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 308(C).
    17. Kerrison, Erin M., 2018. "Exploring how prison-based drug rehabilitation programming shapes racial disparities in substance use disorder recovery," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 140-147.
    18. Filippo Carlo Wezel & Martin Ruef, 2020. "Learning Against the Wind: Diversity and Performance on the Ships of the Dutch East India Company," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(4), pages 330-347, December.
    19. Milena Doytcheva, 2020. "“White Diversity”: Paradoxes of Deracializing Antidiscrimination," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-20, April.
    20. Luzilda C. Arciniega, 2021. "Creating diversity markets through economization: The politics and economics of difference in neoliberal organizations," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 350-364, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:289:y:2021:i:c:s0277953621006808. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.