Gender Inequalities in Health - Research Paper Example

?Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care Throughout the World Introduction There is a discrepancy in health and health care throughout the world, and this discrepancy is between genders. Women are more likely than men to have a variety of health issues, and the reason for this is diverse and differs throughout the world. In many developed countries, women are simply less nourished than men. In other parts of the world, women are less valuable than men, with regards to the work that they do in society. This leads to a variety of issues, including the fact that women may not have access to health care because their employment tends not to provide them with insurance, and also leads to anxiety and depression, as women feel less valuable than men. Finally, women are more likely to live in poverty than men, because of their overall lack of options for employment, compared to men. This factor alone tends to lead to health problems as well, while health problems often exacerbate the issues surrounding employment. The Research Regarding Gender Inequalities in Health Care Annandale and Hunt (2000) state that, historically, there has been a bias against women in the issue of health care. One of the reasons cited for this discrepancy is the fact that there were more studies done on men than women, and that these studies were supposed to extrapolate their findings to the women in the population. Annandale and Hunt (2000) further state that work inequalities often presage health care inequalities, so this was an issue throughout the years when women were relegated to more segregated employment that put them at a socioeconomic disadvantage to men. Moreover, their study recognizes that individuals with paid employment tend to have better health than individuals who do not have paid employment, and, since women tend towards less involvement with paid employment than do men, this is also a reason for the discrepancy in health care. Annandale and Hunt (2000) further state that historically there has been an educational gap between men and women, and this, too, would lead to gender inequalities in health care. Other changes in the lives of women, argue Annandale and Hunt (2000) further lead to health inequalities in women, as opposed to men. These changes include the fact that women are, in increasing numbers, working outside the home and becoming better educated, which, in turn, has led more women to get divorced or to remain single. This has implications for women’s health, because, according to Annandale and Hunt (2000), previously married people have poorer health than married people, as do single people. However, while married people tend to have better health than either divorced people or single people, the positive effect upon health is more pronounced in men than in women. The gender inequality in health and health care is more pronounced around the world than it is in the United States, according to Osmani and Sen (2003). For instance, they point to the subcontinent of South Asia, which includes India and Sri Lanka, in stating that women have unusually higher rates of mortality than do men. The reasons for this, according to these researchers, is that the women in these countries do not receive enough nutrition or health care to ensure their survival. They also note, quite rightly, that this disparity in health care not only affects women, in general, in these countries, but the children of these women, because women who are in ill-health tend to have maternal issues. This is particularly true when women are undernourished, as this will adversely affect her offspring. Osmani and Sen (2003) also interestingly contrast two different kinds of regimes. One of the regimes is known as the old regime, and that means that how people live and die are substantially different than the new regime. In the old regime, people tend to die young and of communicable diseases, such as dysentery. They also tend to be malnourished. This is seen in developing countries. In the new regime, which the Western world has transitioned into over a period of time, communicable diseases and the deaths caused by them are replaced, in effect, by non-communicable and more chronic diseases. Typhus, dysentery and malaria as a cause of death are replaced by heart disease and cancer. In this new regime, people are more likely to die of being overnourished (obese) than being undernourished. Also, people, on the whole, live longer. In many developing countries, which are expanding economically, there are overlapping regimes. In the poor areas, the old regime still reigns. In the richer areas, the new regime is dominant. That said, Osmani and Sen (2003) state that, with both regimes, and in countries where the regimes overlap, women’s health disparities effect the population because of the issue of maternity in relation to women’s health. Specifically, in the old regime, women’s health disparities affect the offspring. In the new regimes, women’s health issues affect the adults, although there are different pathways for each of these outcomes. Osmani and Sen (2003) go on to say that, through most of the world, women outnumber men slightly. Part of this is that men are more likely to die of violence or war than women, and men are also more likely to smoke than women. There are other disparities as well. For instance, these researchers state that female fetuses are less likely to miscarry than male fetuses. That said, there are more male babies born than female babies, everywhere in the world, but males, overall tend to have a higher mortality rate than do females. However, this holds true in most Western and developed countries. In other countries, such as Pakistan, which only has 92 females for every male, the circumstances are different, and that is because there is a disparity in health care for women. For instance, in areas in South Asia, girls are more undernourished than boys. This directly results, according to these researchers, in there being more low birth weight babies born in these areas than in areas where there is not a gender discrepancy in nutrition. This is because female undernourishment leads to retardation of fetal growth, which leads to low birthweight babies. This, in turn, affects the infants as they grow, as low birthweight babies tend to be undernourished children. This leads to difficulties later in life with cognitive abilities and other adult ailments. Doyal (2000) argues that gender inequalities in health and health care is a complex phenomenon, at least in the Western world, where it is not as simply explained as women being more undernourished than men. They start by noting that, obviously, the genders are different and their health care needs are also different. For instance, according to these researchers, women are unique from men in that women’s health relies, at least in part, on being able to have access to reproductive health alleviations. They also make the case that work inequalities between the genders, all over the world, have implications for health care discrepancies. They state that the work that men do, which is typically work outside the home, is more respected and seen as more important than the work that women do. This discrepancy, in turn, leads to inequalities in both mental and physical health, argue these researchers. Their argument is that gender discrimination and the lack of employment opportunities, coupled with the lack of respect that society has for the work that they do, leads to more anxiety and depression among women, which is the reason why women are more likely than men to suffer from these particular health maladies (Fernandez et al., 1999). Doyal (2000) also states that, because women are more likely to have marginal employment than men, if any employment at all, women are also more likely to be in poverty. And, which poverty comes other health care challenges. Among these challenges are the fact that impoverished people tend to have less access to healthy food, which means that they are more likely to be undernourished, just like in the Third World countries. Yet, at the same time, poverty means that people are more likely to be obese, because they have more access to unhealthy foods. Which means that, even as they are undernourished because of the lack of nutritional food available to them, they are overweight because the food that they do have access to is not nutritionally sound. Also, since women are less likely to be gainfully employed at a job that they might have access to insurance, they are less likely to have access to health care than are men. And, since women, even women who work outside the home, also are responsible for most of the child care and housework in the home, women are more likely to be suffering from a lack of sleep, and all the attendant health issues that come from this. Women also suffer from more self-esteem issues, which means that their self-esteem tends to be lower than men, namely because women in most societies are valued less than men. This also affects a woman’s mental health and makes it less likely that the women in these societies will experience good mental health than the men in these societies (Artazcoz et al., 2001). Indeed, the fact that women are paid less than men, are less likely to have high paid job than are men, and are more likely to have the sole responsibility for child care and housework, which limits their ability to work, has profound consequences for women’s socioeconomic status with relation to men. According to Buddelmeyer & Cai (2009), there is a link between socioeconomic status and health. This is a robust link that still remains even when researchers control for different populations and different health issues. For instance, in Australia, which was studied by Buddelmeyer and Cais (2009), it was found that poverty not only causes poor health and is also caused by poor health, so the link goes both ways. If people are in poverty, according to these researchers, they tend to be malnourished, and have less access to health care. They are also more likely than those who are not in poverty to engage in behavior that would, in and of itself, cause health issues, such as smoking, drinking and eating foods which are not nutritionally sound. While poverty causes ill health, ill health also causes poverty, because those in poverty are less able to work (Buddelmeyer & Cai, 2009). This is bolstered by a study by Callandar et al. (2009) who states that almost half of individuals who are not working indicate that the reason why they are not working is because they are in ill health. In particular, back problems are one of the culprits in not being able to work, therefore individuals who suffer back problems are more likely to be in poverty than individuals who do not suffer these problems (Schofield et al., 2012). Another major health problem associated with poverty and the incidence of poverty is cardiovascular disease, according to Schofield et al. (2012). Conclusion There are many different reasons why there are gender discrepancies in health care and health, and these different reasons may vary according to how developed the country is. There is some indication that underdeveloped countries may result in more women than men having poorer health and less access to health care, because these countries tend to systematically undernourished girls more than they do boys. Because of this, these countries also have issues with undernourished babies and children, as undernourished women tend to have children with lower birth weights, which, in turn, leads to children who grow up undernourished, and these children have health problems which are associated with this. However, it is not just undeveloped countries which experience this phenomenon. More developed countries also have issues with gender inequality in health care and in health, because women tend to have lower paying jobs than men, and they also tend to have jobs where they do not have access to insurance. This means that they necessarily have less access to health care than do men, and this also means, paradoxically, that they have more need for health care than men because they tend to experience anxiety and depression more than men because of their economic circumstances. Add to this the fact that, in many countries all over the world, girls are less valuable than boys, because their work that they do is seen as less important than the work that men do. What often occurs is that women will suffer poverty more than men. Lower socioeconomic status is associated with poorer health outcomes, so this would be another reason why women are unequal to men when it comes to health issues. Among the issues seen more often in poor people than wealthy people are health issues that accompany poor health choices, which are brought about because poor people are more likely than wealthier people to smoke, drink and eat the wrong foods. Also, poor people have less access to health care, which means that they tend to be in worse health than wealthy people. And this is a vicious circle, as health problems also cause poverty, in that people who are in poor health are less able to work than those in better health. Therefore, the fact that women, as a whole, are more likely to be poor than are men would account for much of the inequalities in health and health care throughout the world. Sources Used Annandale, E.& Hunt, K. (2000) Gender Inequalities in Health. Buckingham: Open Court Press. Artazcoz, L., Borrell, C. & Benach, J. (2001) Gender inequalities in health among workers: The relation with family demands, Journal of Epidemiological Community Health, 55, 639-647. Callandar, J., Schofield, D. & Shrestha, R. (2011) Multidimensional poverty in Australia, and the barriers ill health imposes on the health of the disadvantaged, Journal of Socio-economics, 40(6), 736-742. Fernandez, E., Schiaffino, A., Rajmil, L., Badia, X. & Segura, A. (1999) Gender inequalities in health and health care in Catalonia, Spain, Journal of Epidemiological Community Health, 53, 218-222. Osmani, S. & Sen, A. (2003) The hidden penalties of gender inequality, Economics and Human Biology, 1, 105-121. Schofield, D., McRae, I. & Shrestha, R. (2008) Equity, poverty and GP access in Australia, Available at: http://crmcc.medical.org/publicpolicy/imwc/Equity_%20Australia.pdf Schofield, D., Callandar, J., Shrestha, R., Percival, R., Kelly, S. & Passey, M. (2012) Labour force participation and the influence of having back problems on income poverty in Australia, Spine, 37(13), 1156-1163. Schofield, D., Callandar, J., Shrestha, R., Percival, R., Kelly, S. & Passey, M. (2012) Labour force participation and the influence of have CV on income poverty in older workers, International Journal of Cardiology, 156(1), 80-83. Read More