Women's Health

It is a simple but profound fact—gender plays a significant role in our overall health. Men and women not only have unique biological processes, but also distinct social norms. These two fundamental components of well-being, the biological and psychosocial, intertwine to set women on a particular health course.

As a sex, women tend to utilize health services more frequently than men. An increased demand for health interventions is partly due to reproductive issues unique to women and elevated rates of diseases such as cancer, heart disease and macular degeneration. Yet surprisingly, women universally live longer than men. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in developed nations, women live on average six to eight years longer than men.

In The Biological Battle of the Sexes GetInsideHealth examines the implications of sex-related biology, yet these factors are only one determinant of women’s overall health and well-being. In the United Nations 2006 World Population Prospectus, women in Japan are shown to live an average of 44 years longer than their female counterparts in Sierra Leone. This vast difference highlights the significance of variables apart from sex-related biology.

Personal choice and responsibility play a role in individual health, but there are many environmental variables that significantly impact the health and well-being of women worldwide. These include relative poverty rates, geography, climate, social norms related to education, literacy and paid employment opportunities, reproductive norms and access to preventive and interventional medical care and health insurance. For example, according to the WHO, women of all ages are at a significantly higher risk of becoming visually impaired in their lifetimes than men. While biology plays a part in this disparity for women in both developing and developed nations, many women in developing nations do not have equal access to preventive or interventional care to address eye health for example, which can eventually lead to blindness.

Women’s Health in the Developed World
While research shows that women in developed countries generally have better overall health than women in developing countries, there are differences in how women fare amongst developed countries as well. Key findings include the following:

• While all women in developed countries have life expectancies higher than the world average, women in Japan can expect to live six years longer than their American counterparts;
• Canada and Western European countries maintain lower rates of maternal and infant mortality than the United States;

• Whereas Western European countries have universal coverage, in the U.S. 18% of women under age 65 are uninsured according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis of the U.S. Census;
• Women in the United States have a higher rate of survival for cancer than those in Canada and European countries;

SOURCE: Eurocare-4 and US SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) reported in 2007 edition of The Lancet Oncology

• The WHO ranked the world's health systems in 2000. They no longer produce these rankings due to “the complexity of the task.” But the findings are still interesting. France and Italy topped the list when compared to all countries. The US was 37th, the lowest of any country in North America or Western Europe. However, when the five criteria were looked at individually, the United States was number one in responsiveness, defined by the WHO as “a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts.”

Women’s health and well-being throughout the world is impacted by many complex and often interrelated factors, from healthcare access issues to social norms and the nuances of healthcare delivery. While women outlive their male counterparts overall, women have a host of unique concerns, both biological and psychosocial in nature, that can translate into longer, but not necessarily healthier, lives. This fact is increasingly being recognized and studied and as GetInsideHealth discusses in The Biological Battle of the Sexes, research is already yielding results that are changing women's live for the better.