“Women Status and the Health of Women and Men”: Article Critique

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Purpose of the article
Findings
Conclusion

Introduction

The latter paper is an analysis of the article “women status and the health of women and men.” This article will be analyzed through various parameters and a critique given at the end of it.

Purpose of the article

The purpose of this article is to indicate that there is a relationship between gender inequality in society and health. Upon completion, the article indicated to draw some light on factors that affect public health and possibly guide policy makers on pro-active actions.

Theoretical perspectives

The latter authors base their research on the assertion that there is a link between gender and health. This is based on earlier theories seeking to give biological explanations of gender differences to psychological analyses dwelling on interpersonal differences between the two genders and social-cultural studies of health differences and gender. However, the authors assert that there are certain gaps in the literature concerning the relationship between society, women, and health. Nonetheless, many studies have looked into some of the parameters that indicate women’s status such as reproductive rights and political participation. Consequently, the authors used these parameters to link them to women’s health.

Empirical antecedents

The authors carried this research based on empirical evidence that indicated the fact that there are certain social factors that cause differences between men and women in society. These differences eventually affect their health. For instance, it had been identified in previous work that there are linkages between the economic dependence of women on their husbands and the occurrence of domestic violence. This, therefore, implies that if women were granted greater status, then chances are that there would be fewer cases of this behavior and better health.

Hypotheses

The authors hypothesized that there is a positive relationship between specific indicators of women’s status and women’s health. The indicators of women’s status selected were; reproductive rights, economic autonomy, political participation, and employment and earnings. The indicators were chosen for women’s health included; cause-specific mortality, self-reported days in activity limitations, and environmental factors such as poverty rates and income distribution.

Another hypothesis was that there is a positive relationship between women’s status in society and men’s health. In other words, when there was gender inequality within a state, then this increased the level of poor health among both sexes.

Lastly, the authors put forward the hypothesis that there is a more positive relationship between women’s societal status and health among black women compared to their white counterparts.

Data and method

The research entailed collecting data from fifty states throughout the United States and creating composites that indicated women’s status in society. For instance, to determine the level of political participation statewide, data on voter participation and turnout were considered. For economic autonomy, the authors collected data about the number of women that held managerial jobs, the degree of gender wage gaps, and women’s labor participation. All this research was secondary in nature because the authors obtained information from the Institute for Women’s Policy research. Composite indexes were constructed by weighting indicators of both health and women’s status and then comparing them to the level of health in those states. Health indicators on mortality were collected from the National Center for Health Statistics, self-reported days of activity limitations were collected from the National Center for Chronic Disease while the ecological eco variants such as poverty and income distribution were obtained from the Luxembourg Income Study.

Findings

The authors found that there is indeed a relationship between the level of gender inequality and health. They also found that where women had lower status in society, then their overall health was also low. Also, they found that there is a relationship between women’s status and men’s status. However, these results differed tremendously depending on the kind of health indicator. The relationship was positive with regard to mortality rates but an insignificant result was found with regard to activity limitations.

It was also found that there is a mild indication of the nature of health status and race. It was found that states with lower representations of African Americans also reported low health outcomes. However, these findings could not be relied on as there was no relationship between specific indicators among blacks and mortality rates.

Critique

The latter research was very concrete in that it has contributed to general knowledge in public health. However, the authors depended on research carried out throughout varying time spans yet some of the factors that they were studying could change with time; for instance, political participation and reproductive rights. Aside from that, the authors have assumed that the factors they chose for indication of women’s status were sufficient. But as the comparison between black and white women indicated; this is not the case. There are a number of other factors that could have caused poor health such as patriarchal culture; this means that the findings may also be inaccurate.

Conclusion

The latter article has indicated that the more unequal a state is in terms of women’s status, then the lower the level of health in that state. Other relationships such as effects on men and race need to be further analyzed as these were not successfully studied.

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