Superwoman schema: uncovering repercussions of coping strategies used among Black women at high risk for HIV

ABSTRACT

The Superwomen Schema (SWS) describes a social framework that encompasses the role that many Black women adopt in response to chronic stress, financial pressures, and an intersection of oppression. Woods-Giscombé (Superwoman Schema: African American Women’s Views on Stress, Strength, and Health. Qualitative Health Research 20 (5): 668–683, 2010) characterizes SWS using five tenets: obligation to manifest strength, obligation to suppress emotions, resistance to vulnerability or dependency, determination to succeed despite a lack of resources, and an obligation to help others. The goal of this study is to determine the connection between SWS among Black women and substance use as a means of maintaining mental health, garnering resilience, and coping with external pressures. We aimed to highlight systemic and infrastructural racism and prejudice and how they relate, not only to the adoption of SWS, but also how they may contribute to substance use. This study is a secondary analysis of a larger study on HIV prevention Black and Latine women at high risk for HIV. Only Black participants (n = 10) were included in this secondary analysis. The interviews were conducted 3 times across 3 months. Interviews were coded and analyzed using thematic content analysis in NVivo. Themes of undiagnosed mental health symptoms, medical mistrust, institutional distrust, and aversion to help-seeking were recurrent in our data. Our research confirmed and assessed dual repercussions of SWS among Black women both as a defense that granted resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds and as a construct that encouraged substance use as a coping mechanism for compromised mental health. This study contextualized this subset of coping and substance use to address and dismantle systemic contributors.

KEYWORDS:

• Superwoman schema
• Black women
• resilience
• substance use
• racism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely thank members of the Gender Health Equity Lab and the participants who shared their stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

The University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board approved all study procedures (2018010100). Data is available in the Texas Data Repository: https://dataverse.tdl.org/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:1099.18738/T8/X61LJB.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [P2CHD042849].