2
Does gender inequality negatively impact public health?
Gender is one of the essential components while considering public health and structuring public health programs. Gender inequality is present within and outside of the public health domain and is generally associated with ethnicity, poverty, lack, illiteracy, and sociocultural environment that have become bottlenecks in the progress of women. It is crucial to address issues that protect women from violence, and social injustice, the right to property, and equal access to education, employment, political and social inclusion (Low, W & Binns, C. 2016).
There are several discussions about how restrictive gender expectations affect everyone’s health. It highlights the harms associated with norms restricting acceptable behaviors of men, women, and gender minorities. There are some key gender inequality issues highlighted in articles that talk about gender inequality such as gender norms interact with health during adolescence for example U.S teenagers’ degree of compliance with gender norms was associated with many health-related behaviors. Certain diseases affect many more women than men and vice versa. Gendered jobs may also carry health risks for example more men die of lung cancer after working in mining (Digitale et al.,2019). There are health-damaging effects of gender inequality and a need to address this issue as injustices in society and not men versus women issues are required.
The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS) 2020 recently published a U.S.WPS index which is a new comprehensive ranking of women’s right and opportunities spread around all 50 U.S States. The U.S WPS Index has three components: first, inclusion, as measured by women’s employment, education, and political representation. Second, justice, as evaluated by legal protections against sex/gender discrimination, attitudes about sex/gender discrimination, and reproductive/maternal health and health care accessibility. And third, being security, as measured by safety in public spaces, freedom from intimate partner violence, and gun violence. Addressing all these components has a great impact on public health. A comparison of state ranking on the overall U.S.WPS Index suggests that there are greater opportunities for women in the Northeast, specifically in New England while the observation showed fewer rights and opportunities for women in the Southeast. The study suggests that geographic variations have been consistent with past research on the association between health, education, and poverty. It is essential to have focused geographic efforts on gender inequality problems that can lead to worse public health outcomes by improving policies and treatment of women. The idea is not to create a man versus women environment but to achieve health, education, and financial stability for all to have better health and economic outcomes. As per Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, And Security, the participation as a country in Generation Equality which is a global campaign led by UN Women for gender equality and upliftment, will help prioritize equality and improve peace, security, and strength which have been proven outcomes of women’s equal participation in society and eliminating gender inequality.
As per the Global Gender Gap Index for 2021, United States was ranked as 30th in the world by the World Economic Forum for the year 2021. The Global Gender Gap Index is based on gender-based gaps among four key components which are economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health, and survival. it helps in tracking the progress towards closing these gaps to achieve an equitable society. As per the report, one of the highlighted gender equity problem for the United States
has been political empowerment Economic empowerment of women has improved but the earning power in comparison to men’s earning power remains lower ( Zahidi, S et al., 2021). The COVID-19 crisis has contributed to several barriers in addressing pre-existing gender gaps. In several economies and industries, the additional pressure of providing care in the home apart from jobs or losing employment has amplified the gender gaps.
However, there needs to be a persistent effort to reduce the gender gap and eliminate gender inequality. Gender inequality predominantly exists more in neighborhoods with poor socioeconomic environments, racial disparities, low income leading to poor health outcomes. Identifying these regions and improving care and access in essential.
A study focused on gender equality examines how to address restrictive norms and inequalities in health systems, by recognizing and mitigating strategies to reduce, or prevent gender inequalities. The health system comprises several components such as clinical facilities, governance, workforce, and finance to facilitate health for the population at scale and the interactions between the health system and the community are generally impacted by gender inequalities and restrictive gender norms. This has a direct influence on the efficiency of every component of the health system structure. This endemic nature of the gender inequalities hinders the progress of health for all and compromises the health of communities at large (Hay, K et al., 2019).
Gender inequalities have great implications on the standard of living and good health. Education is a very strong social determinant of health. Attaining education can affect health as education can draw better job opportunities which lead to better income and standard of living and healthy living. Educated parents can influence the lifestyle and health of the next generation health. Hence, a mother’s schooling and education is essential for her health and have a positive and significant influence on the child’s health.
Empirical studies have shown that social factors such as education are essential causes of health and disease as they control accessibility to a multitude of resources such as healthier lifestyle, salary, safe neighborhoods, better healthcare facilities, lifestyle modifying resources that are associated with better health outcomes. Therefore, schooling is associated with better health and longer life. An individual’s educational experiences are determined by the parental socioeconomic status and other background components that influence the social and educational trajectories. For example, children of low educated parents are unlikely to complete higher education (Zajacova, A & Lawernce ,E 2018).
A comparison study examined the long-term implications for a population of teenage mothers who give birth to their children around the end of high school comparing them with mothers who did not experience the same disruption to their education. The results showed that teen birth led mothers to
5.4 percentage points less likely to complete their high school education, are less likely to marry, and tend to have more children compared to their counterparts. This could render them to fall below the poverty threshold, poor health, and difficulty in child-rearing in turn affecting the child’s health too (Schulkind L & Sandler DH 2019).
A review study proposes that unfavorable socioeconomic conditions at family and community levels lead to high teen birth rate in the U.S. The socioeconomic factors were considered as influences on teen childbearing, suggesting that at least one statistically significant association relating to low socioeconomic status, underemployment, low-income, low education levels, neighborhood disadvantage, or neighborhood-level inequality to teen birth. Ameliorating strategies to address socioeconomic conditions at various levels could possibly help tackle disparities in teen childbearing (Penman-Aguilar et al., 2013).
The BRFSS prevalence and analytic tools help identify the regions where more efforts are required to address gender inequality and the social determinants that impact it. Accelerating efficient policies and strategies to identify and improve the quality of life for teen mothers through facilitation of incentives, funding for education and access to health care is required to better the health outcomes. Addressing the bottlenecks to access education, and health through various public health tools to prevent teen pregnancies and help achieve an education with the target to achieve gender equality is crucial in better economic and public health outcomes for a nation.
Globally, the attainment of gender equality seems to be a major challenge for almost all countries. As per the Global Gender Gap Index for the year 2021, Scandinavian countries like Iceland, and Norway are leading in their efforts and progress towards closing the gender gap and were able to do so as they provide equitable distribution of resources, income, and opportunities for both genders equally. The Middle East, countries in Africa, and South Asia have greater gender gaps (Zahidi et al., 2021) The major contributing factors in these countries could be cultural influences where women are often subjected to poor or no education, poor accessibility to reproductive health care, poor socio-economic environment. However, some of these nations where there is a wide gender gap are participating Generation Equality efforts, and other global efforts towards Sustainable Development Goal 5 which is achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.
Recognizing gender inequalities at all levels and addressing its geographical, social, and financial barriers can help achieve better health outcomes for all and reinforcing a gender-equitable society. An equitable society recognizes that equity comprises equal pay, parental leave, jobs, access to education and childcare, and a full range of reproductive healthcare services which include preserving women’s rights. It is even more important in the light of the COVID-19 crisis, that the efforts to engage in the improvement of the gender gap and accessibility to health must be promptly handled. Gender-sensitive strategies to recover from the crisis of the pandemic will be required while working on closing the gender gap.
References:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, August 31). CDC – 2019 BRFSS Survey Data and Documentation. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_2019.html.
Crotti, R., Pal, K., Ratcheva, V., & Zahidi, S. (2021, March). The Global Gender Gap Report. The Global Gender Gap report . http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf.
Digitale, A., Huber, A., & Benzkofer, A. (2019, May 31). Gender inequality and rigid norms linked with poor health; global research shows. Retrieved June, 2021, from https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2019/05/31/gender-inequality-and-rigid-norms-linked-with-poor-health-global-research-shows/
Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, And Security. (2020). Introducing the U.S Women, Peace, And Security Index 2020.
Hay, K., McDougal, L., Percival, V., Henry, S., Klugman, J., Wurie, H., Raven, J., Shabalala, F., Fielding-Miller, R., Dey, A., Dehingia, N., Morgan, R., Atmavilas, Y., Saggurti, N., Yore, J., Blokhina, E., Huque, R., Barasa, E., Bhan, N., … Gender Equality, Norms, and Health Steering Committee. (2019, June 22). Disrupting gender norms in health systems: making the case for change. Lancet (London, England). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7233290/).
How Healthy is your County?: County Health Rankings. County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. (n.d.). https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/.
Low, W., & Binns, C. (2016). Gender Issues and Public Health. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, 28(2), 104-106. Retrieved June, 2021, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/26686226
Penman-Aguilar, A., Carter, M., Snead, M. C., & Kourtis, A. P. (2013). Socioeconomic disadvantage as a social determinant of teen childbearing in the U.S. Public health reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3562742/.
Schulkind L, Sandler DH. The Timing of Teenage Births: Estimating the Effect on High School Graduation and Later-Life Outcomes. Demography. 2019 Feb;56(1):345-365. doi: 10.1007/s13524-018-0748-6. PMID: 30607778.
Zajacova, A., & Lawrence, E. M. (2018). The Relationship Between Education and Health; Reducing Disparities Through a Contextual Approach. Annual Review of Public Health.
The post 2 Does gender inequality negatively impact public health? Gender is one of appeared first on PapersSpot.
