Gender at the Margins: Bedouin Women's Perceptions of Lebanese Health Provision

Abstract

With a history of social and political marginalisation, mobile populations are most deprived of access to adequate health service provision. While they have undergone sociopolitical changes that bring them closer to mainstream health provision, their perception of the available health provision is still rarely sought by policy makers. This paper addresses these gaps by exploring the perceptions that Bedouin women have of reproductive health services in the Bekaa valley of Lebanon. Historically at the margins of health policy making, Bedouin populations in Lebanon have recently been facing significant sociopolitical changes to their ways of life that affect their perceptions of access and use of health services. In the past 40 years, the Bedouin have gradually settled in informal permanent or quasi‐permanent settlements and engaged with modernised sedentary modes of living overlapping with their own. Their entitlements to social provision and political participation were also renegotiated in the post‐conflict political era (post‐1990) through an inconsistent naturalisation process managed by dominant political players. These changes have been significant in reshaping the positioning of the Bedouin as a social group in the broader Lebanese society. Against this backdrop, the paper asks the following question: How do women negotiate their reproductive health issues in relation to the dominant Lebanese mixed‐provider health model? The paper argues that Bedouin women's perceptions of, and engagement with, the health system are hindered more by the inconsistencies and shortfalls of the health system than by any specific barriers stemming from their ways of life. Their access and use of health services are underpinned by institutional discrimination against their ethnic group at various levels of health provision.

Citation

Mansour, N. (2010), "Gender at the Margins: Bedouin Women's Perceptions of Lebanese Health Provision", International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 42-52. https://doi.org/10.5042/ijmhsc.2011.0064

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