Gender and Social Production of Health and Illness - Term Paper Example

In what ways is gender significant in the social production of health and illness? Name Course/Unit Instructor 14 September 2012 Introduction Gender and sex remain two contested topics that continue to escalate the unending debate on the two (Sen, 2009). Gender, as used by social scientists, constitutes roles, relationships, personality traits and behaviours that have been constructed with social prisms and have subsequently been assigned to the two sex groups: men and women (Sen, 2009). At the same time, this definition has to incorporate social constructed aspects of attitudes, values, power and influences that the two sexes exhibit differently (World Health Organisation, 2010). Besides, gender is seen to be relational whereby gender roles and characteristics are largely interdependent (Lorber & Moore, 2002). Relationship between gender and health has been found to explain the differences in vulnerability and impact of specific health conditions between men and women (Vlassoff, 2007; Ahmad et al., 2012). Moreover, it has been established that gender has played an important role in influencing health policies and their implementation process, how medical technologies are developed and applied between men and women, and how established health systems react to male and female patients (Vlassoff, 2007). In order to establish meaningful health behaviours among the people it is important to incorporate social and economic factors, which in turn are products of cultural and political conditions in the society (Vlassoff, 2007). Therefore, with this understanding, it is important to evaluate ways gender has significantly participated in the social production of health and illness. Gendered body in social context According to the feminist perspective, sex constitutes reproductive organs and functions that originate from chromosomal complement (Lorber & Moore, 2002). On the other hand, gender is perceived within the feminist perspective to constitute an individual’s self-representation, that is, how the person is responded to by social institutions based on individual’s gender presentation (Lorber & Moore, 2002). In this manner, feminist perspectives advance idea that the people’s gender identifications and gender displays constitute responses to the social pressures, which, in turn, are implicated in a gendered social order. Social construction perspective on its part considers gender to be a society’s division of people into categories for men and women, where gender operates as an individual social status, relational factor, an organisational process, and a system-level social institution (Pollard & Hyatt, 1999). This is to say, gender as concept is reflected in the building blocks of social orders where it gets built into organisations, floods interactions and relationships and constitute a major social identity for individuals (Pollard & Hyatt, 1999). Furthermore, gender is seen to be part and parcel of social orders in many societies of the world. This can be evident in numerous instances where gender is visible in economy, the family, religion, the arts, and politics of different societies. As a result, gender in these societies constitutes a primary status for individuals, where it has established and clear patterns of expectations and life opportunities. The social construction perspective is further analysed and concept of gender is seen to be an ongoing process (Lorber & Moore, 2002). This can be evidenced in the numerous instances where gender manifests in circumstances to do with interaction with people, socialisation during childhood, peer pressure and adolescence, and gendered work and family roles. Notable in these cases is that people are largely put into two groups and made to be different in behaviour, attitudes and emotions. These differences persist as a result of social order that produces and maintains the differences. In 1990, Patricia Hill Collins came up with a term ‘matrix of domination’ to refer to gendered social order, where gender is seen to be multiple, although men and women are not homogenous groupings (cited in Lorber & Moore, 2002). It can be noted that the framework for the gender lens on illness and health is the change of the body through gendered social practices (Sweetman, 2001). These practices develop prior to birth and dictates what a mother who is pregnant eats, what technology and care is available during prenatal care, what picture do the woman’s family, education and economic status depicts, and what social worth does the child of a woman based on race, ethnic, economic and family background is likely to have (Sweetman, 2001). All these characteristics affect the unborn child, infant and growing child in many ways. Therefore, social practices produce social bodies all through life and death. At the same time, given that gender is largely intertwined in the major social institutions of society, it performs an important role in determining how men and women of different social groups are treated in all the sectors of life, that include health and illness. Hence, gender can be considered to be one of the primary factors that take an active role in transforming physical bodies into social bodies. Ways gender is significant implicated in social production of health and illness World Health Organisation (2012) report finds out that gender differences exist across the societies and this can be linked to dictates of cultures. Gender differences have further become horoscopes that explain existence of gender inequalities across societies of the world (Ahmad, et al., 2012). The understanding is that gender inequalities constitute considerable differences between men and women, which have further led to a situation where one group is empowered at the expense of the other. The empowerment in this case is seen to favour men, where unlike women; they tend to have higher cash incomes that explain the current form of gender inequality (World Health Organisation, 2012). Moreover, gender inequalities does not just stop with cash income, but transfuses to other social aspects like provision of healthcare, education, occupation status, and employment status where considerable gender inequities exist between men and women (Denton, Prus & Walters, 2004). This further explains the social inequality in health status, access and acquisition. Gender as it was established earlier largely involves the dictates of social constructions that are later attached to men and women. As a result, men and women behave and conduct their daily lives according to social prescriptions engrained in the culture (Denton, Prus & Walters, 2004). Gendered society is responsible for health inequalities between men and women. For example, it has been established that women in some societies are alienated from health care services due to the fact that norms exist in such societies that block women from accessing health care services alone (World Health Organisation, 2012). At the same time, prevalence of illnesses like HIV/Aids tend to affect women more due to the prevalence of societal standards that allow and protect a man’s promiscuous behaviours while at same time give less decision powers to a woman to demand use of condoms (World Health Organisation, 2012). Besides, cases of lung cancer and related mortality cases among men tend to be high as compared to women since cultures of many societies give men leeway and social permission to smoke, but for a woman, such behaviours are frowned at, and in some cases punished (World Health Organisation, 2012). In all these cases, it becomes clear that roles and expectations that have been socially attached to gender aspect of a man and a woman dictates how health inequalities is developed and sustained in the society. On the other hand, Vlassoff (2007) argues that gendered society is responsible for discriminatory roles and expectations for men and women. Because of gender, women in many societies especially developing societies have been systematically been sidelined and excluded in the main social institutions such as economy, education, and politics. This social exclusion expands to other critical areas such as health care, where majority of women are discriminated in accessing better health services (Vlassoff, 2007). Social exclusion is further reinforced by increasing tendency among women to remain subordinate to men. In this way, men as dictated by culture and existing norms participate in systematic activities that deny women public spheres and visibility. SAs a result, many women become invisible in society and public sphere, a situation that denies them opportunity to acquire information and knowledge about availability and access to health care services and products (Vlassoff, 2007). Social construction perspective as it was seen earlier postulates that gender is part and parcel of social orders in many societies of the world. Gender in this manner can be said to dictate how social ordering process takes place in society. Social ordering can be viewed within the lenses of social class, poverty, mortality, education, employment, and many more social aspects that can be used to categorise or order people into particular groups (Ajiboye, 2011). As social ordering takes place, it is becomes clear that, it affects ability of the people to access and acquire health services and also explains the vulnerability and variability that exist between men and women regarding the prevalence of some illness. Study carried out in Jamaica by Bourne (2011) established that poverty affects more women than men and those women in rural areas tend to be poorer as compared to urban women. Unemployment in the country was also found to be a feminised phenomenon, where more women than men are unemployed. Besides, it was established that wealth in the country is skewed in the hands of upper class than working class; where in this case, majority of men are found in upper class than women (Bourne, 2011). As a result, Jamaica exhibit greater aspects of socio-economic differences that have been contributed by the concept of gender. Subsequently, this gendered social ordering is responsible to the inequalities that continue to be witnessed between men and women in the country (Bourne, 2011). Besides, it was established that gender as concept is reflected in the building blocks of social orders where it gets built into organisations, floods interactions and relationships and constitute a major social identity for individuals (Pollard & Hyatt, 1999). From this, it is deduced that gender constitutes a primary factor that take an active role in transforming physical bodies into social bodies. This scenario is captured by Antony Giddens, who note that disparities in health have been noted to exist between men and women (Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). According to the author, material circumstances are some of the factors that explain health disparities between women and men; this aspect reflects social ordering as a result of gender (Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). Moreover, Giddens established that women in industrialised countries tend to report twice as much anxiety and depression as men. Some of the reasons that have been considered to contribute to this situation include observation that women, unlike men, tend to perform numerous gendered roles. Some of these gendered roles include domestic work, child care and professional responsibilities that increase stress on the part of the woman and contribute to higher rates of illness (Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). Besides, Lesley Doyal (1995) established that the different patterns of health and sickness among women as compared to men, can explained in relation to the primary areas of activities that define the lives of women (cited in Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). In this case, the lives of women are seen to be different from that of men in terms of the roles and tasks performed by these two sexes. On the part of women, they largely perform roles and tasks such as domestic work, sexual reproduction, childbearing and mothering and regulating fertility through birth control (Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). All these tasks put a woman at high risk to develop health complications and illness than a man. Conclusion It has been established that in deed, gender significant contribute to social production of health and illness. This can be captured in the two analysed theories of feminist perspective and social construction perspectives. The two perspectives regard gender to be socially constructed in assigning roles and expectations to men and women. This therefore, creates differences between genders: men and women, where the two genders appear to be unequally empowered. The empowerment of one gender thus leads to emergence of social inequities in key areas of education, economy, employment, income, health care, and many more that in turn explains the differences in health and illness between men and women. But, it should be noted that given that gender is a socially constructed concept, it means it is not statistic and can be changed. This therefore means that concerted efforts can result in change or elimination of inequities being witnessed in health and illness between men and women. References Ahmad, R. H., Jennifer, S. W., Avni, A., Islene, A., Beard, J., Boerma, T., Kowal, P., Naidoo, N., & Somnath, C. (2012). Social Determinants of Self-Reported Health in Women and Men: Understanding the Role of Gender in Population Health. PloS One, 7 (4): 1-9. Ajiboye, O. E. (2011). Gender Differentials in Health Status and Socioeconomic Wellbeing of Older Persons in Lagos State, Nigeria. Gender and Behaviour, 9 (2): 4052-4072. Bourne, P. A. (2011). Gender, Women and Health: Gendered Health Differences. International Journal of Collaborative Research on Internal Medicine & Public Health, 3 (7): 550-574. Denton, M., Prus, S., & Walters, V. (2004). Gender Differences in Health: A Canadian Study of the Psychosocial, Structural and Behavioural Determinants of Health. Social Science & Medicine, 58: 2585-2600. 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