Building on a previous paper, which highlighted that a lack of attention to “intra-community inequalities” in ME/CFS may lead to the realities of those in minority groups being erased or misrepresented, Joanne Hunt, a researcher at Uppsala Universitet in Sweden and person with severe ME/CFS, has written another article emphasising the urgent need for intersectionality – related to the idea that where people belong to more than one underserved group, they may face multiple disadvantages – to be considered in healthcare related knowledge spaces.
Underserved groups are populations that receive less than adequate access to resources, services, or representation, often due to factors like ethnicity, sexuality, geographic location, or social and economic position (typically measured using income, education, and occupation), leading to disparities in health, education, and other areas.
In the recently published paper, Hunt explains that intersectionality theory emerged partially because of a critique highlighting how the mainstream feminism claim of representing all women was ‘grounded in the experiences and perspectives of privileged (White) women’. A concept illustrated in the speech “Ain’t I a women” by Sojourner Truth which, according to the National Women’s History Museum ‘exposed how Black women were excluded from traditional notions of femininity and equality, revealing the unique oppression they faced at the intersection of race and gender.’
Hunt explains that although points made within the article are focused on ME/CFS, many may also apply to other groups who “are ‘ambiguously disabled’, especially those which lack access to economic benefits and a range of other government disability services”.
Key points made by Hunt include:
- The UK government’s ‘final delivery plan’ on ME/CFS was ‘silent’ on intersectionality.
- “ME/CFS healthcare tends to lack both cultural sensitivity and structural (sociocultural, relational, economic, environmental, political) sensitivity.” This lack of sensitivity risks both wrongly placing blame on the individual for structural failings, and “erasing multiply marginalised experiences, knowledges and needs within the community.”
- Although UK ME/CFS knowledge spaces often claim that the disease ‘does not discriminate’, research shows that “racially, ethnically and socioeconomically minoritised groups are at greater risk of developing ME/CFS, experience greater impairment and symptom severity and are more likely to remain underdiagnosed relative to the more privileged.”
- The damage done by the cultural and medical narrative of ‘hysteria’ which frames women’s emotions, behaviours, and physical pain as irrational, dramatic, or even “mad” reinforces these intersectional patterns.
- Intersectionality is most urgently needed in ME/CFS healthcare and related knowledge spaces.
ME Research UK has summarised Hunt’s previous work:
- Lack of attention to “intra-community inequalities” in ME/CFS may lead to the realities of those in minority groups being erased or misrepresented.
- Epistemic Injustice among People with ME/CFS
Published articles from ME Research UK commenting on the importance of intersectionality in ME/CFS research include:
- International Women’s Day 2026
- Observations from an online workshop on ‘ME research and underserved groups’
- Improving ME/CFS population sampling
- Can a simple, short screening test distinguish people with a diagnosis of ME/CFS from people who have symptoms of the disease but no diagnosis?
