This document discusses how gender impacts health and identifies key differences in how women and men experience health and illness. It explains that women have a longer life expectancy than men due to behaviors linked to constructions of masculinity like smoking, drinking, and aggression. Women face different health hazards due to the sexual division of labor and patriarchy, which can increase stress levels. Medicalization also renders women's lives more subject to medical control, especially regarding reproductive health. The document argues that understanding gender relations is important for explaining health inequalities between women and men.

1. SOC108 – TOPIC 4
Gender and Health

2. Learning and teaching objectives
• Understand the relationship between gender and
health.
• Identify the ways in which women and men
experience health and illness differently, and why
these differences exist.
• Explain the impact of medicalisation on womens’
health experiences, particularly their
reproductive health.
• Explain why a focus on gender relations is
important in understanding health inequality.
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3. What is gender and why is it
important?
• Gender is a fundamental sociological concept.
• Gender is a basic organising principle in social
life; for allocation of duties, rights, rewards
and power.
• Sociologists tend to see gender as a ‘social
construct’ (historical and culturally relative).
• We become gendered by: (a) Socialisation;
and (b) Taking up the various constructs of
masculinity and femininity available to us.
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4. In what ways is gender relevant to
health?
Men and women:
• Experience different patterns of life expectancy.
→ Women have a longer life expectancy than
men.
• Are exposed differently to health hazards.
→Women are exposed to different risk factors
than men.
• Are different in their use of health care services.
→ Women make much greater use of health
services than men.
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5. How can these differences be explained?
(1) Life expectancy
• Mens’ lower life expectancy linked to higher rates
of (a) violent behaviour and aggression; (b)
alcohol consumption; (c) dangerous driving, and
(d) smoking.
• These behaviours are related to socially and
culturally-prescribed constructions of masculinity.
• Such behaviours are often ignored by society as a
‘normal’ part of being male.
• If these behaviours transgress acceptable social
norms they are frequently dealt with as a criminal
justice issue, rather than a health issue.
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6. How can these differences be explained?
(2) Exposure to health hazards
Sexual division of labour
• Men have historically been concentrated in hazardous
occupations where the risk of physical injury or death
is greater.
• Many female-dominated jobs are characterised by low
levels of autonomy and pay that may give rise to poor
mental health.
• The ‘double-burden’ on women in managing work
(paid and unpaid) and child care responsibilities
increases stress levels, reduces the time available for
physical exercise, and puts them at increased risk of
illness.
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7. How can these differences be explained?
(2) Exposure to health hazards
Patriarchy
• Women are more likely to be victims of
domestic violence and sexual assault.
Sex-role socialisation
• Pressure on women to conform to social
norms of femininity, beauty and thinness puts
them at increased risk of eating disorders.
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8. How can these differences be explained?
(3) Use of health services
Medicalisation
• Women’s lives are significantly more
medicalised than men’s due to a large range of
physiological processes (e.g., conception and
childbirth in particular) that have been
categorised as medical issues/pathologies.
• This renders women’s lives far more subject to
medical social control than men.
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9. Sexism in medicine
There is a systematic ‘physician bias’ with regard to women (i.e.,
there is differential treatment of men and women). For instance:
• Health research historically was typically conducted on men
and the results extrapolated to women.
• Women’s health concerns have often been (a) treated as
psycho-somatic, or (b) trivialised as hormonal or linked to the
menstrual cycle.
• Historically, women had problems gaining access to birth
control, particularly if they were young, unmarried or
disabled.
• Recent research has found that men are less likely than
women to be prescribed restrictions to their physical activity.
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10. Homework
• How accurate is the statement,
‘Women get sick, while men die’?
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