Gender and social determinants of health

Abstract

The existing paradoxical differences in the mortality and morbidity rates (death rates and illness rates) between men and women, which are difficult to explain by biological factors, have called researchers’ attention to social and cultural factors as a possible explanation. The worldwide statistics indicate that women outlive men in almost all countries, while at the same time they suffer from higher morbidity rates than men, due to chronic physical and affective disorders. In addition, the data shows that women, as compared to men, are underprivileged in several material resources that are important to preserve good health. This puzzling situation has invited a search for socio-cultural factors that could shed some light on the nature of different health patterns of men and women. This article uses a sociological perspective in an attempt to show that the observed differences may be attributable to differing socio-cultural and structural arrangements of both genders.