Gender and Womens Health

1
Gender and Womens Health

• Gender, ethnicity and health intersect at many
  levels.

2
How Gender Intersects With Health

• Risk for certain illnesses depends on gender
• Biological factors
• Sociocultural factors
• Gender and ethnicity affect how illness is
  viewed, researched, and treated.
• Gender affects how illness is experienced (its
  meaning, symptoms, impact on life roles)
• Illness is an important part of many womens life
  experience.

3
Looking at Gender and Health

• How does being female affect health?
• How is illness affected by being female?
• How does a womans ethnicity affect her health?
• How is a womans life affected by illness?

4
Ideals of Feminine Beauty and Behavior as Health
Risks

• Engaging in self-harming behaviors to make the
  body conform to feminine ideals
• Obsessive pursuit of thinness
• Obsessive pursuit of ideal body through any means
  available
• Cosmetic surgery
• Tanning (increased cancer risk)
• Toxic exposure
• Failure to protect oneself in sexual situations
• Difficulty being assertive about ones health
  needs.

5
Gender Bias in Medical Care

• Gender bias exists in medical research
  training.
• Attitudes compared with men, women are more
  often belittled, told their problems are
  psychosomatic.
• Womens pain is taken less seriously than mens
  pain.
• The doctor-patient relationship is affected by
  gender
• Being listened to and taken seriously
• Its all in your head
• Ability to have a 2-way conversation
• Doctors behavior
• Womens lack of assertiveness

6
Diseases that Threaten Women

• STDs
• HIV/AIDS
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Cancer

7
Sexually Transmitted Infections

• At least 1 in 4 teen girls in the U.S., and
  almost half of African American teen girls has an
  STI
• 45 of American women, age 20-24, are infected
  with Human papillomavirus (HPV).
• If untreated, these infections have serious
  health consequences.

8
STIs Have a Disproportionate Impact on Women

• Transmitted more easily to women
• More difficult to diagnose in women
• Women are at higher risk because of gender roles
  and cultural norms
• Women have little knowledge of STIs
• Cultural taboos discourage communicating with
  partners and health care providers

9
Women and HIV

• Women of color are the fastest growing group of
  Americans infected with HIV.
• Heterosexual sex has become the leading method of
  transmission.
• AIDS is the 6th leading cause of death in
  American women aged 25-35.
• Leading cause of death for Black women 25-35.
• Women with HIV often have multiple problems, need
  extensive services, care for children.

10
Cardiovascular Disease

• The leading cause of death for both genders world
  wide.
• More women in the U.S. die of heart disease than
  from all forms of cancer combined
• Black women are 72x more likely to die of heart
  disease than White women
• Gender differences in age of onset and symptoms
• Women receive less of every type of treatment!

11
Breast Cancer

• Lung cancer is the 1 cancer killer of women.
• Smoking is a risk factor for LC and BC.
• 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer at some
  point in her life (lifetime risk)
• Before 40, 1 in 213
• Age 50-55, 1 in 26
• Age 70, jumps to 1 in 15.
• 80 of women diagnosed will NOT die of the
  disease
• African American women have higher mortality than
  White women. (poverty, poor access to care, more
  aggressive tumors in AA women)

12
Reactions to Breast Cancer the Patient and
Society

• Datans story from the late 1980s
• The feminist position
• Whose problem is the lost breast?
• Lumpectomy versus mastectomy
• Reconstruction
• How best to help women?