Home Sweet Home? Neighborhood Cohesion Offers a Coping Mechanism for Gender Discrimination Linked With Psychological Distress

Abstract

Despite recent progress in the past few years gender discrimination is still an ongoing problem. Eric Grollman’s work states that experiencing gender discrimination can have a negative impact on one’s mental health causing stress and mental distress for the individual. It is important to examine how people cope with the added stress of facing gender discrimination. Leonard Pearlin’s work argues that coping works to alter or handle the meaning of the situation from which stressors occur or to not allow stress to go out of a manageable reach. Neighborhood cohesion may act as a coping mechanism to alleviate the stress that comes with experiencing gender discrimination. Moreover, according to Elizabeth Brondolo, African Americans cope with racial discrimination through social networks, i.e. racial/ethnic identities have been shown to help an individual cope with racial discrimination. Social networks already function as a coping mechanism for racial discrimination, so then the question arises of if it could work as a coping mechanism for gender discrimination. I argue that social networks can impact the relationship between experiencing gender discrimination and the mental distress that is caused by the stress of experiencing discrimination.