Stakeholders seek gender equity in health

Understanding and addressing gender-related health issues
to help both sexes have a longer healthy life
expectancy should take a more prominent role in EU
policy making, stakeholders have argued.

There is still much work to be done before gender
equity becomes the norm in all EU policy areas with
direct or indirect impact on the health of EU citizens.
This was one of the key conclusions reached at
a recent roundtable organised by the Madariaga
Foundation’s Centre for Health, Ethics and
Society.

The promoters of women’s and men’s health see
their work as complementary in a battle to gain more
recognition in the EU for gender equity. They would
like to overcome health inequalities resulting from the
(perceived) social and cultural roles specific to men and
women. The two sides would like to see more
gender-sensitive indicators compiled and gender-specific
information made available. They would also like gender
differences to be more of a factor when developing health
targets.

Progress in medical technology has
increased human lifespan, but, at the same time, it
has also increased the proportions of life spent in
disability, pain and mental suffering. Broadly
speaking, women tend to live longer than
men but also spend greater proportions of their
lives suffering from chronic diseases and disability at
all ages.

There are differences in 

vulnerability to specific illnesses based on the sex of
the individual. For instance, breast cancer is 15 times
more likely to occur in women. However, certain diseases
have changed gender patterns over
time. Cardiovascular disease, which used to be
considered a male disorder, has claimed more and more
deaths in women. Meanwhile, mental health problems (such
as depression and anxiety), which had been considered
primarily a woman’s disease, have claimed
increasingly high numbers of male
victims. 

When a disease is considered typical to one sex, the
other sex tends to suffer from a greater likelihood
of misdiagnosis due to a lack of knowledge about the
clinical presentation and risk factors specific to the
other sex.

A speaker from the cabinet of the outgoing
commissioner responsible for employment and social
affairs explained that the Amsterdam Treaty recommends
that gender is integrated into all policy areas
while the EU Constitution cites gender equity as an
‘obligation’. In a recent development, an
annual report is being submitted to the European Council
on gender mainstreaming. 

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