Abstract
The dictum, ‘women get sicker but men die quicker’ is often treated as an established fact. However, historical demographic data demonstrate that women have not always outlived men. Moreover, current data from developing countries demonstrate that war, epidemic, disease and extreme poverty can diminish, or even reverse, women’s advantage in life expectancy (see National Center for Healthcare Statistics, 2009; World Health Organization, 2008). Thus the apparently paradoxical gender differences in morbidity and mortality are neither universal nor invariant within and across societies (Annandale, 2009).
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Key reading
Annandale, E. (2009) Women’s Health and Social Change (Abingdon: Routledge).
Bird, C. E. and P. P. Rieker (2008) Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choice and Social Policies (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Schulz, A. J and L. Mullings (eds) (2006) Gender, Race, Class and Health: Intersectional Approaches (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass).
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© 2010 Chloe E. Bird, Martha E. Lang and Patricia P. Rieker
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Bird, C.E., Lang, M.E., Rieker, P.P. (2010). Changing Gendered Patterns of Morbidity and Mortality. In: Kuhlmann, E., Annandale, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290334_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290334_8
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