Editorial Note:
This blog feature was created by the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) Media Editor, Stephanie Wilson, in celebration of the first place winner in AKD’s 2025 undergraduate student paper competition, Emma Farrow.
Each year AKD sponsors an undergraduate student paper competition. Winners are eligible to win cash prizes and travel money to attend the American Sociological Association annual conference. The first place winner received $500 and up to $1,000 in travel expenses to the 2025 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Continue reading to learn more about Emma Farrow’s winning paper!
Meet Emma Farrow
Emma Farrow is a student in the Department of Sociology at Central Connecticut State University. Her paper titled “Wounds of Inequality: The Intersectionality of Gendered Racism in Healthcare and Autonomy” earned her a first place prize in our 2025 Undergraduate Student Paper Competition. We would also like to acknowledge Emma’s faculty mentor for the project, Dr. A. Pearson, for her dedication to student success!
To learn more about Emma and her research, we reached out for a brief interview. Continue reading below to learn more about Emma, her award-winning paper, and her experiences as a sociology student! You can also connect with Emma on Instagram.
Can you briefly summarize your award-winning paper?
Regardless of class, status, or education, Black women are more than three times more likely to die a pregnancy-related death than their white counterparts, which is a direct consequence of deeply rooted racism in the U.S. healthcare system. Additionally, Black women are more likely to experience adverse birth outcomes and complications (i.e., hemorrhage), higher preterm birth rates, higher cesarean delivery rates, and even higher rates of infertility.
This study was designed to examine Black women’s understanding of gendered racism in healthcare and how this gendered racism functions to reduce the quality of care received by women of color by utilizing an intersectionality framework that would allow for the appropriate consideration of racial identity and gender in the unique lived experiences of Black women.
Participants reported a lack of feeling heard or cared for by their doctors, regrettably shared their perceptions of gendered racism in healthcare (and its impact on their experiences) and their experience of being forced to advocate for themselves in exceptional ways. This study demonstrates how the uniqueness of Black women’s healthcare experiences is a result of their intersecting social identities within various social systems and systems of oppression.
What motivated you to write on the topic of your paper?
Five years ago, my cousin went into her surgery appointment and never came home. Directly post-op, everything seemed fine, until she started feeling sick. When she returned to her doctor, they sent her back home saying she just needed to rest. She returned once again the next day only for the doctors to discover that she was septic from a bowel perforation during the surgery. Because of that doctor dismissing a Black woman’s concerns, my cousin died in her 30s.
Once I started studying sociology, I learned more about intersectionality. When beginning my research project in my junior year, I was frustrated about the racial disparities in maternal mortality rates and inspired to seek some form of justice for my cousin. After some work with my project and the topic I wanted to cover, I realized that intersectionality was more than just a concept, but also a framework that would allow me to give a voice to those women who feel most ignored, disrespected, and forgotten.
As a sociology student, what has been your favorite class and why?
I have a hard time picking one favorite, because I’ve enjoyed many of the classes I’ve taken. In particular, I loved the Racial Relations, Masculinity/Manhood, Social Movements, and Gender, Race, and Global Migration classes that I took. As a biracial student, I was able to thoroughly enjoy a class on Racial Relations because it gave me a space to openly discuss forms of racism that I’ve personally experienced.
Masculinity/Manhood and Gender, Race, and Global Migration really completely changed my perspective on the world giving me a better understanding of the experiences of immigrants and even men in our society.
Lastly, the Social Movements course reminded me of the immense power that college students have during this politically and historically significant period in our nation’s history and it has inspired me to take part in protests and political action.
What have been your biggest “aha” moments while studying sociology?
There were two “aha” moments for me—one of those being when I read some of the writing of W.E.B. DuBois and the other being when I learned about intersectionality. Until I read DuBois’ work, I struggled to understand my race and its true impact on my everyday life. I remember getting strange looks from people in my local supermarket and having people question the texture of my hair, thinking it’s fake. But reading his work and discovering the “veil” of my race has changed my perspective and has made me a more outspoken, empathetic and understanding person and for that I am very grateful. And in a weird way, even though DuBois was writing about deeper issues, racism is much larger than many people acknowledge and impacts even subtle everyday interactions so DuBois’ work spoke to me in that way because it emboldened me to speak out against being mistreated and discriminated against.
Intersectionality was the second “aha” moment for me because I was beginning to learn more about what my social identity was and I realized that the concept of intersectionality helped to explain how my life would be completely different from the life of a white woman, a white man, and a Black man. As humans, we have a general understanding that everyone’s lives are different because we are all individual people with different goals, experiences, etc. But, it wasn’t until I learned about intersectionality that I was able to understand the differences of systems of oppression and how individuals experience oppression in unique ways depending on their intersecting social identities. And as you can probably tell, this had a huge impact on my research project and has led me to winning awards and being recognized nationally for my project.
If you had to choose one concept, theory, or idea from sociology that has had the biggest impact on how you view the world around you, what would it be and why?
I would say gender expectations/gender inequality. Before studying sociology I knew that our society was a patriarchy and that men had more privilege and rights than women. But once I began studying sociology, it became obvious to me that it was much deeper than that and that our society has a systemic problem with pushing both men and women into restrictive boxes based on a culturally established accepted set of norms for men and women. I started to take note of little things that I would experience in my everyday life because I’m a woman, things like older men at my job telling me I’m prettier when I smile or people looking surprised when I stand up for myself or others. I began to see things through a gender inequality lens- wondering if I would have different opportunities or if people would look at me or speak to me in a different way if I was a man. And the more I saw these things in that way, the more I was able to see these things throughout the world and recognize inequality on a global scale.
Gender inequality and gender ideology in sociology has pushed me to no longer stay silent and to call things like they are. And I’ve come to understand that whether the injustice I’m witnessing or experiencing is racism or sexism, sociology provides me with a way to fight back and demand justice for all people.