Work, SES, Womens Health

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Work, SES, Womens Health
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Employment and marital status cont

• Leaving a low-paying, part-time job differences
  for married and single mothers
• The stigma of being an unemployed, single mother

3
Burnout and the Family

• Burnout the experience of prolonged stress but
  not knowing how to cope with it
• Produces physical and emotional exhaustion
• E.g. perfectionist, police families, pastor and
  family

4
Indirect Effects of Burnout

• Susceptibility to illnesses
• E.g. Heart disease and ulcers
• Reduced sense of accomplishment and self-esteem
• Alcohol or drugs to cope
• Suicide but as an extreme response

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Direct Effects

• Irritation and anger of family members
• Must be left in peace
• Demand for extra attention and then guilt once
  they have it
• Reduce the inability to cope with stress

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Direct Affects cont

• Reduced effort to exercise, lessen stress and
  unable to open up emotionally to spouse
• Lower levels of patience
• Marital conflict can lead to separation and
  divorce
• Burnout as catching

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Gender, Health, and Illness

• Women get sicker but men die quicker
• Women are not a homogeneous group-not all women
  are equal
• Women in less industrialized countries do not
  fare as well- 20 years or more
• Women live longer but report more illness than
  men
• The specific causes of death

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Life Expectancy at Birth

• Country Males Females
• Denmark 72.8 78
• United States 72.7 79.4
• Germany 73.6 79.9
• United Kingdom 74.4 79.3
• New Zealand 74.3 79.8
• Netherlands 74.7 80.4
• Spain 74.4 81.6
• France 74.1 82
• Australia 75.2 81.1
• Canada 75.7 81.4
• Switzerland 75.7 81.9
• Japan 77 83.6

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Age-Standardized Deaths (Deaths per 100,000)

• Cause Male Female
• Cancer 231 153
• Lung Cancer 72 33
• Breast Cancer 0 29
• Cardiovascular Disease 288 179
• Coronary Heart Disease 184 95
• Stroke 51 43
• Respiratory 82 4
• Pneumonia/ Influenza 29 18
• Accidents 63 25
• Suicide 21 6

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Explanations of Gender Differences

• Three possible ways artefact, genetic causation,
  and social causation
• Women are more likely to take notice of their
  symptoms
• Female genetics geared to resistance of diseases
• Social and economic inequalities contribute to
  these patterns
• The social production of health and illness

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Social Production of Health and Illness

• Produce negative health outcomes
• Male socialization exposes men to riskier
  behaviour
• Demanding and contradictory social roles for
  women- produce negative outcomes
• Two theoretical perspectives to explain gender
  differences- differential exposure and
  differential vulnerability

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Differential Exposure and Vulnerability

• Women experience hardships because of their
  disadvantaged social position
• Women perceive lack of control, increase in
  psychological distress
• Vulnerability- effects of stressors differ for
  each because of a variety of reasons
• Sociocultural norms and meanings associated with
  roles
• Womens health has everything to do with work

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Medicalization of Womens Bodies and Lives

• The human body a centre for the medical
  profession
• Medicalization- activity becomes illness
• Looking at the body through medical eyes
• Past dictated that it was Gods displeasure
• Womens lives of little concern to doctors and
  powerful mens groups
• Childbirth as a medical event

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Medical Profession

• Women were taken over, so to speak, by the
  medical profession
• Discrediting womens expertise
• Doctors become societys experts in childrearing
• Male body the norm for research on women
• Medical advice generally accepted by women
• Medical profession as a social control feature

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So What Does it Mean for Women?

• The home as the womans natural sphere
• The structuring of division of labour, mothering
  and the home
• The working mother to blame as she is practicing
  maternal deprivation
• The physical removal of children
• Womens own demands played a part in the
  medicalization of childbirth

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The Medicalization of Womens Appearance

• An interest in the ordinary person- productive
  for capitalism
• The body as a machine
• The relentless focus on body weight- the
  overweight individual as a threat to productivity
• This fear is being passed on to children- the
  medical concern for the fetus

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Why Focus on Women?

• Women are assigned the roles of caring for
  familys health and well-being
• Monitoring of their own weight with vengeance-
  anorexia and bulimia

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Group Work

• 1. What are some of the sociocultural messages
  that are portrayed to women about their bodies?
• 2. What are the predominant images that plague
  womens beauty and who contributes to this?
• 3. How do women solve their inabilities to meet
  these societal goals of beauty?
• 4. What repercussions do these societal attitudes
  have for future generations of women and men?