In our last blog we spoke about how gender being related to everyone and that this has different impacts on men and women’s health. We want to explore why this is.
As soon as we are born we are assigned a gender, male or female. Males are expected to grow up to be strong, stoic problem solvers, things we consider to be masculine. Women are expected to be “girly” to like pink, to dress fancier and to be chatty, things that we consider to be feminine. But it is not as simple as this. What if a man is more feminine than he is masculine? or a woman is more masculine? most of you reading are probably thinking “that’s okay they should be allowed to be themselves” but even when these people are accepted and get along well with others they can feel outcast-ed and different, because they do not fit the norm. This can lead to depression, and unfortunately can sometimes lead to suicide and self harm. Here’s where we get to the “men die quicker part”. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women as men are expected to be emotionally strong and stoic, so they feel like going to speak with someone is emasculation and may refuse to do so. men are also more likely to try to talk themselves out of depression (Warren, 1983) This leads to the problem snowballing and eventually overwhelming them. This has led to slogans such as “its okay to talk” to encourage men to see someone if they’re feeling down and help to improve their mental health.
Now for the “women get sicker” part. As women get older it leads to various health problems, and as many males are out of the picture it leads to statistics of people with health problems being skewed which makes it appear as if women are more prone to illness than men as they get older as only a minority of men have made it to the same age. It also appears as if women are more prone to illness as many men would rather not self-report that they have been or are ill and many men refuse to go see a doctor when they are sick due to the stigma of not being a stoic, masculine male. This leads to illnesses being caught when it’s too late and the unfortunate reality is this leads to the man getting very ill and sometimes passing away as a result, whereas women will usually go see a doctor and catch it early on and live on. what do you make of these differences?
We know this blog may have been slightly upsetting to some readers but we would like our readers to take a positive message from it, we want readers to know that its okay to talk and encourage anyone having a hard time to do so, or to listen to a friends problems, it could just save a life!
The Gender Health Club 