Gender disparities in health

WHO has defined health as 'a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.' Identified by the 2012 World Development Report as one of two key human capital endowments, health can influence an individual's ability to reach his or her full potential in society. Yet while gender equality has made the most progress in areas such as education and labor force participation, health inequality between men and women continues to plague many societies today. While both males and females face health disparities, girls and women experience a majority of health disparities. This comes from the fact that many cultural ideologies and practices have structured society in a way whereby women are more vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment, making them more prone to illnesses and early death. Women are also restricted from receiving many opportunities, such as education and paid labor, that can help improve their accessibility to better health care resources. Health disparity has been defined by the World Health Organization as the differences in health care received by different groups of people that are not only unnecessary and avoidable but unfair and unjust. The existence of health disparity implies that health equity does not exist in many parts of the world. Equity in health refers to the situation whereby every individual has a fair opportunity to attain their full health potential. Overall, the term 'health disparities', or 'health inequalities', is widely understood as the differences in health between people who are situated in different positions in a socioeconomic hierarchy. The social structures of many countries perpetuate the marginalization and oppression of women in the form of cultural norms and legal codes. As a result of this unequal social order, women are usually relegated into positions where they have less access and control over healthcare resources, making women more vulnerable to suffering from health problems than men. For example, women living in areas with a patriarchal system are often less likely to receive tertiary education or to be employed in the paid labor market due to gender discrimination. As a result, female life expectancy at birth and nutritional well-being, and immunity against communicable and non-communicable diseases, are often lower than those of men. While a majority of the global health gender disparities is weighted against women, there are situations in which men tend to fare poorer. One such instance is armed conflicts, where men are often the immediate victims. A study of conflicts in 13 countries from 1955 to 2002 found that 81% of all violent war deaths were male. Apart from armed conflicts, areas with high incidence of violence, such as regions controlled by drug cartels, also see men experiencing higher mortality rates. This stems from social beliefs that associate ideals of masculinity with aggressive, confrontational behavior. Lastly, sudden and drastic changes in economic environments and the loss of social safety nets, in particular social subsidies and food stamps, have also been linked to higher levels of alcohol consumption and psychological stress among men, leading to a spike in male mortality rates. This is because such situations often makes it harder for men to provide for their family, a task that has been long regarded as the 'essence of masculinity.' A retrospective analyses of people infected with the common cold found that doctors underrate the symptoms of men, and are more willing to attribute symptoms and illness to women than men. Women live longer than men in all countries, and across all age groups, for which reliable records exist. In The United States, men are less healthy than women across all social classes. Non-white men are especially unhealthy. Men are over-represented in dangerous occupations and represent a majority of on the job deaths. Further, medical doctors provide men with less service, less advice, and spend less time with men than they do with women per medical encounter. At birth, boys outnumber girls with the ratio of 105 or 106 male to 100 female children. However, after conception, biology favors women. Research has shown that if men and women received similar nutrition, medical attention, and general health care, women would live longer than men. This is because women, on a whole, are more resistant to diseases and less prone to debilitating genetic conditions. However, despite medical and scientific research that shows that when given the same care as males, females tend to have better survival rates than males, the ratio of women to men in developing regions such as South Asia, West Asia, and China can be as low as 0.94, or even lower. This deviation from the natural male to female sex ratio has been described by Indian philosopher and economist Amartya Sen as the 'missing women' phenomenon. According to the 2012 World Development Report, the number of missing women is estimated to be about 1.5 million women per year, with a majority of the women missing in India and China. In many developing regions, women experience high levels of mortality. Many of these deaths result from maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS infection. Although only 1,900 maternal deaths were recorded in high-income nations in 2008, India and Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a combined total of 266,000 deaths from pregnancy-related causes. In Somalia and Chad, one in every 14 women die from causes related to child birth. In addition, the HIV/AIDS epidemic also contributes significantly to female mortality. The case is especially true for Sub-Saharan Africa, where women account for 60% of all adult HIV infections. Women tend to have poorer health outcomes than men for several reasons ranging from sustaining greater risk to diseases to experiencing higher mortality rates. In the Population Studies Center Research Report by Rachel Snow that compares the disability-adjusted life years (DALY) of both male and females, the global DALYs lost to females for sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and chlamydia are more than ten times greater than those of the males. Moreover, the female DALYs to male DALYs ratio for malnutrition-related diseases such as Iron-Deficiency Anemia are often close to 1.5, suggesting that poor nutrition impacts women at a much higher level than men. Additionally, in terms of mental illnesses, women are also two to three times more likely than men to be diagnosed with depression. With regards to suicidal rates, up to 80% of those who committed suicide or attempted suicide in Iran are women. In developed countries with more social and legal gender equality, overall health outcomes can disfavor men. For example, in the United States, as of 2001, men's life expectancy is 5 years lower than women's (down from 1 year in 1920), and men die at higher rates from all top 10 causes of death, especially heart disease and stroke. Men die from suicide more frequently, though women more frequently have suicidal thoughts and the suicide attempt rate is the same for men and women (see Gender differences in suicide). Men may suffer from undiagnosed depression more frequently, due to gender differences in the expression of emotion. American men are more likely to consume alcohol, smoke, engage in risky behaviors, and defer medical care.