Seeking for health care: issues of gender and race among black contributors from a university

Abstract

Objective: Analyze the issues of gender and race involved in seeking for health care among black contributors from a university. Method: this is a qualitative study conducted by means of semi-structured interviews, whose subjects were 10 employees and outsourced workers from a university located in Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil. Results: in general, men do not seek health care the same way as women. Fears with regard to bringing his masculinity into question, due to undergoing exams, and to the risk of job loss, due to time off from work, suggest to a man that seeking for health care implies a conjuncture of unemployment, economic deprivation, and powerlessness to provide his family with a living. Conclusion: we identified influence of the categories race and gender and interference of social constructs related to them in seeking for health care among black men who are active in the labor market.