When class silences disclosure: Working-Class women, sexual violence and classed gender stigma in healthcare

Feminist sociology has illuminated how sexual violence both reflects and reproduces gendered inequalities, yet its intersection with social class remains comparatively under-theorised in health research, particularly in relation to healthcare and disclosure. This study advances critical social science research on health and healthcare by theorising classed gender stigma as a mechanism through which class and gender intersect to shape working-class women's willingness to disclose sexual violence within healthcare encounters. Drawing on episodic interviews with working-class women in Scotland, the analysis focuses on disclosure within healthcare and related professional support context, including specialist mental health services and third-sector provision. The findings show how classed histories of dismissal, material constraint and respectability norms shape women's expectations of being believed and their assessments of whether healthcare encounters are safe spaces for disclosure. Disclosure within healthcare emerges as a socially organised process shaped by classed relations of care and institutional practices, including appointment structures, referral pathways and access to paid support. The analysis develops the concept of classed gender stigma to show how healthcare encounters shape whose disclosures are recognised as credible and deserving of care following sexual violence. The paper advances understanding of how health inequalities are reproduced through silence within healthcare contexts and highlights the importance of integrating analyses of class and institutional practice into health-focused research on sexual violence disclosure.