Recently we have taken upon a module of interest as part of our final year in college. Gender Specific Health Promotion, sounds straight forward right? We found ourselves receiving an in depth look at what exactly gender is and how being a certain gender creates expectations of us in a world where doing anything out of the ordinary can be considered “weird”. We found this not just interesting but eye opening. As we’ve recently come to understand, gender is not solely based on the biological sex of a person but rather the role they conform too and the characteristics they feel comfortable portraying to everybody else. For instance, women are portrayed to be weak, helpless and emotional while men are powerful, in control and stern. Anything outside or different to these characteristics are considered abnormal to the public as social media has reinforced the characteristics of a “real” man or woman.
Susan P Philips over at Queen’s University in the Department of Family Medicine, published a paper discussing that gender is related to everyone and how in return, being a specific gender has its impacts on both men and women’s health. She begins the paper by clarifying the difference between sex (biological factors) and gender (socially constructed role). She then goes on to discuss the widely emphasized myth that men’s mortality rates and health difficulties are directly related to their behavior in a “men behaving badly” style opinion believed worldwide. It is explained that both women’s and men’s behavior have similar impacts on health however just in different ways. We found this particularly interesting considering as men we feel like males are more prone to early death rates from the expectations applied to males through gender selection (hard labor jobs, risky activity etc.). If this was not the case, there must be more avenues to investigate in relation to how women are outliving men not just in Ireland, but in most of the developed countries around the world (Philips, 2005).
Further exploration of sources and lectures in the module pointed out a very obvious, yet un-thought of reason for earlier deaths in the male population. The idea of masculinity producing expectations of strong, independent men who don’t require any help from anyone. This means that most men will not seek medical attention unless as much as a near death issue arises. In other words, most men would nearly need an arm hanging off before agreeing to seek attention by a professional. This again is a socially constructed gender figure which is automatically applied to most men from an early age. Doyle (2001) explained clearly for us that “An unwillingness to admit weakness may prevent many men from taking health promotion messages seriously and from consulting a doctor when problems arise”. The fact that this socially constructed trait may affect males attending doctors when medical attention is required waves a big red flag for us and shows that there needs to be a different approach to men’s health implemented throughout the world. Gender specific health promotion is indeed, a necessity.
The Gender Health Club 