- Royce Fellowship
Concentration
Award Year
Ho-Shia's research project evaluated the cultural changes in the social construction of women gender roles among Hmong-American families living in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota and Sacramento, California. He sought to understand these changes more thoroughly and asses how these changes have influenced the family’s decision-making process pursuant the issue of medical compliance both within their own ethnomedical system and the US biomedical system. Ho-Shia's study concluded that with Hmong women increasingly obtaining higher education in comparison to Hmong men, they have been able to attain higher positions in both the Hmong and American social domains. The study suggests that with a greater power to influence family decisions within the home in conjunction to providing healthcare for their families, Hmong women have shown an increase in medical compliance with the US healthcare system, although this does not mean a decrease in use of traditional medicinal healing.