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MA Thesis Defense

From Feeling Sick to Being Ill: How Young Women Experience Chronic Illness

Dunahay Pereyra
Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut

Committee Members
Dr. Nancy Naples (Chair)
Dr. Jane Pryma
Dr. Laura Mauldin

Friday, September 30, 2022 | 10:00 am EST
Zoom Link Below


For many years, chronic illness has been associated with old age, but there is a rising population of young people who receive diagnoses early in life and then must grapple with the prospect of illness for years to come, if not the rest of their lives. Due to wide-held beliefs about both their age and gender, young women in particular struggle to be diagnosed and get treatment for chronic illness (Cleghorn 2021; Conrad 1992). My thesis seeks to address gaps in the existing literature by investigating the experience of chronic illness for young women as they go through symptoms, diagnosis, and management stages. I draw on social construction of illness models (Brown 1995; Conrad and Barker 2010; Cooper and Gilbert 2017; Freidson 1970; Jutel 2009), as well as feminist health scholarship (Broom, et al. 2015; Dusenbery 2017; Duong 2019; Kempner 2014; Schalk and Kim 2020; Washington 2019), and disability studies (Garland-Thomson 2003; Mauldin and Brown 2021; Pryma 2017; Schalk and Kim 2020; Thomas 2012) in order to capture the full breadth of issues faced by young women with chronic illness. By combining these different approaches, my analysis makes connections between the micro-level interactions women have with healthcare workers and members of personal social networks, and women’s daily pain and illness management, as well as resources vital to this management. In this way, I generate findings that integrate feminist disability and health scholarship. My study utilizes data from twenty-one semi-structured, in-depth interviews with young women who self-identify as having a chronic illness. I found that the lack of medical certainty has led these women to develop strategies for dealing with both the physiological and social implications of their chronic illness(es).


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