Gender and Physical Health

Abstract

The academic debate on gender and physical health, which began in the 1970s (Mechanic, 1978; Nathanson, 1977;Waldron, 1976), has continued since then on both sides of the Atlantic. For most of this time, it has been generally accepted that women experience more illness than men and are higher users of health services but that, in spite of this, they live longer. As briefly discussed in Chapter 1, these facts are summarised in the phrase — ‘women are sicker but men die quicker’. This seemingly contradictory statement is based on substantial research evidence of higher levels of morbidity in the female population and higher levels of mortality in the male population.