Defining and measuring gender: A social determinant of health whose time has come

Abstract

This paper contributes to a nascent scholarly discussion of sex and gender as determinants of health. Health is a composite of biological makeup and socioeconomic circumstances. Differences in health and illness patterns of men and women are attributable both to sex, or biology, and to gender, that is, social factors such as powerlessness, access to resources, and constrained roles. Using examples such as the greater life expectancy of women in most of the world, despite their relative social disadvantage, and the disproportionate risk of myocardial infarction amongst men, but death from MI amongst women, the independent and combined associations of sex and gender on health are explored. A model for incorporating gender into epidemiologic analyses is proposed.

From gender bias to gender awareness in medical education

“…For instance, gender differences in responses to pain may be related to physiological mechanisms of the brain or to psychosocial factors or to both (Pinn 2003). Therefore, in medicine it is necessary that we include all features of sex and gender in order to get a clear understanding of health determinants (Phillips 2005).…”

“…WHO 2001;van MensVerhulst and Moerman 2002;Pinn 2003;Bekker 2003;Phillips 2005;Hammarström 2007). A diversion of scientists with regard to gender, age, ethnicity, class or sexual orientation is necessary to prevent the perspective of one group to bias research design, approaches, subjects, and interpretations (Rosser 1994).…”

The Barker hypothesis and obesity: Connections for transdisciplinarity and social justice

“…The concept 'social determinants of health' (see Thisted, 2003), a 'shorthand for describing health approaches that move beyond biomedical and behavioural risk factor approaches to health promotion' (Raphael, 2006, p. 652), is integral to the Barker hypothesis, which suggests that health, like wealth, is distributed socially according to, for example, gender (Denton et al, 2004;Phillips, 2005;Sen and Ostlen, 2008), race and ethnicity, class (Mackenbach and Howden-Chapman, 2003) and human geography. Although this concept is not new, the move is significant because, although in principle they are concerned with 'social factors' in the aetiology of disease, epidemiologists tend to account for them only as statistically confounding variables rather than as causative (Pearce, 1996), especially in the context of what has been called the 'epidemiology wars', debates about the best ways to account for multi-causality (see Shim and Thomson, 2010).…”

Beliefs and Attitudes Regarding Determinants of Health in Turkey and Palestine

“…As, when the system fails to find sufficient financial resources to carry out social and economic reforms, how can this system spend more on health care? [61].…”