Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). federal government has increased its interest and investments in identifying factors that contribute to and can reduce existing health disparities, such as those in women’s sexual and reproductive health ( U.S. Also, the rate of new HIV infections in the United States among Black women was more than 20 times the rate among White women in 2010 ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012).
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Black Americans experience an infant mortality rate that is more than twice as high as that experienced by White Americans and that disparity is mostly explained by group disparities in low birth weight and preterm delivery ( Martin, Hamilton, Ventura, Osterman, & Mathews, 2013 Murphy, Xu, & Kochanek, 2013). Because of this focus, the research referenced throughout this article and the study participants are from the United States. Our broader interest is in whether the unique stereotypes of Black American women, due to their intersecting racial identity and gender identity, may contribute to persistent, disproportionately high rates of adverse sexual and reproductive health outcomes among Black women in the United States ( Rosenthal & Lobel, 2011). However, as intersectionality theory suggests (e.g., Cole, 2009 Collins, 2000 Crenshaw, 1993 Warner, 2008), many societal stereotypes uniquely pertain to the intersection of multiple identities, including race or ethnicity in combination with gender (e.g., Ghavami & Peplau, 2013 Thomas, Witherspoon, & Speight, 2004). The majority of research studies on stereotypes have focused on single identities, such as that of a marginalized racial or ethnic group or a gender group. Societal stereotypes about a wide range of social groups persist in the United States, are promoted or reinforced through the mass media, and can have numerous detrimental consequences (e.g., see Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010 Rosenthal & Overstreet, 2016). Findings also highlight the value of research employing intersectionality to understand stereotypes. Current findings, along with evidence that societal stereotypes have damaging effects, underscore the importance of diversifying images of Black women and increasing awareness of how stereotypes affect perceptions of Black women. A Black target described as pregnant was also perceived as more likely to be a single mother and to need public assistance than was a White target described as pregnant. A Black female target (pregnant or not) was perceived more negatively on items related to historically rooted societal stereotypes about sexual activity, sexual risk, motherhood status, and socioeconomic status than was a White female target, but there were no differences on items unrelated to societal stereotypes. White) and pregnancy status (pregnant vs. university were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions in which they viewed a photograph and read a description of a target young woman. In an online experimental study, 435 undergraduates from a Northeastern U.S.
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We focus on the unique stereotypes of Black women in the United States related to sexuality and motherhood. Intersectionality theorists and researchers suggest the importance of examining unique stereotypes associated with intersecting group identities.