Understanding Gender & Health
Wk 3: 2
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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How Does Gender Perceives Fitness, Body Weight,
Height (Body Mass Index)
• What is to men & women
fitness mean?
• How do you see your own
body weight, height?
• What types of clothing would
women & men choose for
casual, special events: dinners,
weddings ---Funerals?
• How do see your diet and
lifestyle? Are they connected?
• How do media portray body
image? What is it to the girls &
boys?
Diet
Health
Lifestyle
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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Being Poor?
2
Sex & Gender Relations – health status
• Interaction with social class, race, ethnicity,
age sexual orientation to shape health
status & physician-patient relationship &
treatment by health care system
• Health as to WHO (1960) is
multidimensional.” a complete state of
physical, mental, & social well-being.”
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Hierarchical
* Power Relations
*Ability to make decisions
with regards to own body.
-Unwanted pregnancies
-Unsafe abortions
-Maternal deaths
-STDS
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Premise
“Inequity in the relations between
men and women places one or the
other sex at a disadvantage in terms
of access to and control of
resources, e.g. needs to protect
health.”
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Patterns of ill health
Factors affecting who gets ill
Factors affecting responses to ill health
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Environment
Bargaining
positions
Households
Communities
Influence of
States?Markets?Int. Relations
Resources
Activities
Gender norms
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Gender & Mortality
• Do women live longer than men on average?
• What is live expectancy of females & males in
Canada? What does statistics say?
• For Malaysia, women live longer than men:
average 82 vs 73
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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Life Expectancy at Birth by Sex for Selected Countries
Female Life
Expectancy (in
years
Country
Japan
France
Switzerland
Sweden
Spain
Canada
Australia
Italy
Norway
82.9
82.6
81.9
81.6
81.5
81.2
80.9
80.8
80.7
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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Male Life
Expectancy (in
years)
76.4
74.2
75.1
76.2
74.2
75.2
75.0
74.4
74.9
9
Country
Female Life
Expectancy (in
years
Male Life Expectancy
(in years)
Netherlands
80.4
74.6
Greece
80.3
75.1
Austria
80.1
73.5
Germany
79.8
73.3
Belgium
79.8
73.0
England & Wales
79.6
74.3
Israel
79.3
75.3
Singapore
79.0
73.4
USA
78.9
72.5
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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Life Expectancy at Birth by Sex for Selected Countries
Country
Female Life
Expectancy (in
years
Male Life
Expectancy (in
years)
Finland
New Zealand
Puerto Rico
Portugal
Northern Island
Ireland
Denmark
80.3
78.9
78.9
78.6
78.5
78.1
77.9
72.8
73.3
69.6
71.2
73.1
72.5
72.8
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, 2000. in
Renzetti & Curan. Most data from 1995
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Gender-focused health programs
recognize that gender
is an organizing principle that affects
women and men
in all aspects of their lives, and
consequently influences
the outcomes of health programs and
interventions.
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Gender -a social construct because it
is defined,
supported and reinforced by societal
structures
and institutions. It is also a psychosocial construct
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Gender inequities in access to
and influence upon health programs, resources, and
services suggest that a common plan is unlikely to serve
men’s and women’s distinct needs. Gender-differentiated
priorities and processes are needed to guide health
policies. Governments exert a powerful impact—both
positive and negative—on funding for health programs
through, for example, requirements that programs
must include an evaluation component. If evaluation
and other processes do not reflect gender differentiation,
they perpetuate old models that overlook gender
needs and differences, and fail to support the empowerment
of women.
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*Many women-centred organizations recognize the need
to develop gender-specific and woman-centred
programming
and evaluation.
*The Prairie Women’s Health
Centre of Excellence (PWHCE), one of five Centres
of Excellence for Women’s Health is dedicated to
conducting policy-oriented research to improve the
health status of Canadian women by making the health
system more aware of and responsive to women’s health
needs
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social bases of women’s health,
. . . the evidence in many studies in several
countries is consistent. Ill health is associated with
disadvantage. As income declines, so does health;
each increment in income is associated with
an improvement in women’s health status. Social
class, as measured by occupation, housing
tenure and access to a car is similarly associated
with health.
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Women in the labour force have
better health than homemakers, though their
health is associated with their occupational status,
with women in the higher status occupa
occupations
experiencing better health. Women with
higher levels of education are more likely to enjoy
good health. Studies
also indicate that racial minorities experience
poorer health . . . Such patterns are . . .
compelling evidence of the importance of understanding
the social bases of health and illness
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A new health determinants model has been developed
by Davidson et al,7
P Income and
socioeconomic
status
P Education
P Social environment
P Cultural affiliation
P Physical environment
P Personal health
practices
P Coping skills
multidimensional constructs
P Employment and
working conditions
P Healthy child
development
P Biology and genetic
endowment
P Health services
P Social support and
networks
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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GENDER EQUITY MODELS
Practical vs. Strategic Needs Model
The concepts of “practical needs” …the needs that
arise from imbalances of
power between men and women in most societies.
Strategic interests may include increasing
women’s access to education; reducing the amount
of domestic labour that falls to women; enhancing
women’s legal rights; ending family violence; providing
opportunities for women to develop leadership
skills; and increasing access to family planning
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practical needs
p tend to be immediate,
short-term
p are unique to particular
women
p are related to daily needs:
food, housing, income,
healthy children, etc.
p easily identifiable by
women
p can be addressed by provision
of specific inputs: food, clinics etc.
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strategic needs
p tend to be long-term
p common to almost all
women
p relate to disadvantaged
position: subordination,
lack of resources
and education, vulnerability
to poverty and violence,
etc.
p basis of disadvantage
and potential for change
not always identifiable by
women
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..Strategic Needs
p can be addressed by:
consciousness-raising, increasing
self-confidence,
education, strengthening
women’s organizations,
political mobilization
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ADDRESSING
PRACTICAL NEEDS
P Tends to involve women
as beneficiaries and perhaps
as participants
P Can improve the condition
of women’s lives
P Generally does not alter
traditional roles and relationships
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Addressing Strategic Needs
P Involves women as
agents or enables
women to become agents
P Can improve the position
of women in
society
P Can empower women
and transform relationships
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WELFARE APPROACH: Women
seen as passive beneficiaries
P Helps the most vulnerable groups, including
women;
P Sees women as passive recipients of
development;
P Centres its perspective on the family as a unit,
emphasizing the reproductive role of women;
P Views better child rearing as the principal
contribution
of the program;
P Uses a practical gender approach to gender equity
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ECONOMIC SELF-RELIANCE APPROACH:
Gender inequities reflect
poverty, not gender subordination
P Attempts to ensure increased productivity of
poor women;
P Sees women as poor because of economic
limitations, not gender-structured constraints;
P Recognizes the productive role of women;
P Emphasizes small, income-generating projects;
provides productive skills;
P Uses a practical gender approach.
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EFFICIENCY APPROACH: Women
as under-developed human capital
P Sees women in terms of their ability to compensate
for deteriorating public services;
P Relies on women’s reproductive, productive, and
community roles and their supposed free or flexible
time; recognizes the gender division of labour;
P Sees women entirely in terms of their delivery
capacity and supposed ability to extend working
day;
P Increases women’s access to skills training, technology
and resources;
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P Uses a practical gender approach.
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer 08
EQUALITY APPROACH: Affirmative
action to ensure women have
an active role in development
P Identifies women as the target population of programs
or projects;
P Designs programs to reduce inequality between
men and women, especially with regard to the
division of labour by gender, and to increase the
political and economic autonomy of women;
P Is directed to any of the three roles (reproductive,
productive, community);
P Uses a strategic gender approach through top down
government interventions giving political
and economic autonomy to women in order to
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& Gender
decrease their inequality. wkHealth
3:2 Summer 08
EMPOWERMENT APPROACH: Defines
empowerment as access to
and control of the use of material,
economic, political, educational
information and time resources
P Has its origins in women’s grassroots organizations;
P Proposes a new relationship in health of shared
power between the health sector and different
groups of a population;
P Sees women’s subordination not only in relation
to men at the individual level, but as part of predominant
political, economic, psychological and
social models;
P Uses bottom-up mobilization around concrete
health needs in a manner that incorporates strategic
gender approaches—can use both practical
and strategic gender approaches.
Health &
Gender wk
Programs may reflect a combination of approaches.
3:2 Summer
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• Which countries have a bigger sex differentials in life
expectancy?
• Would race matter in terms of significant sex
difference in life expectancy?
• Theories supporting the differentials:
1. Biological – genetics partly
• Chromosomes: 23 pairs in human. One determines
sex.
• Male: XY; Female: XX
• XX according to science carries more genetic info than
Y including some defects.
• But, XX has a genetic advantage over YY.
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• 2 defective X Chromosomes for most genetically
linked disorders
• One healthy Chromosome overrides the
abnormal one.
• For male, if X is defective, he has the genetically
linked disease. Higher number of miscarriages
of male fetuses
2. Hormonal Differences bet the sexes.
Female sex hormones, the estrogens appear to give
women some protection against heart disease.
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Mortality Rate: the number of deaths in proportion to
a given population.
• Heart diseases: causes. Smoking, personality traits:
types A, B & D
• Cancer
• Occupational Hazards to Male & Female Workers
• AIDS
• Women, Men & Morbidity Rates
• Women’s morbidity rates higher than men: higher
rates of illness from acute conditions & non-fatal
conditions. Women are slightly more likely to report
their health as fair to poor.
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Sexism in Health care
Health & Gender wk 3:2 Summer
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3. Marital Status at least for men
• Research found men bet 45-65, lived alone or with
someone other than a spouse were 2 times likely to
die within 10 years of men of the same age but lived
with spouse
• For women more of low income than by lack of
spouse.
• Studies showed that men rely almost totally on
their spouses for social support.
• Married men express a higher level of well-being
than their non-married peers. Women: married and
non-married - no difference in their level of
contentment.
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• When a woman’s husband dies, she typically retains
the social support of relatives & friends (Helgeson,
95)
• When spouses become seriously ill, wives are more
likely than husbands to nurture their spouses through
illness, whereas men are significantly more likely than
women to divorce seriously ill spouses (M.S. James,
2001)
• Do you see a relationship between life expectancy
and conformity to traditional gender stereotypes?
• Examine male & female mortality rates for particular
causes.
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