Gender Roles Sociology

Health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. (WHO, 1948, p.I). There are some social factor may affect people’s health condition and healthcare professionals are always highly expected by us. Therefore, in this essay I will firstly discuss how gender roles and class influence our health condition. Secondly, I will explain why healthcare professionals are expected to be sensitive to health inequality.

Gender roles is one of the factors that can impact one’s health condition. Gender can be defined as cultural differences between femininity and masculinity and gender roles refers to the expectations of society regarding proper behavior, activities

Women feel that they are responsible to care and put the need of family members as first priority and distribute more goods to the detriment of their own health (Doyal, 1995). On the other side, male-dominated occupations are related to paid work and ill-health. The bodily capacity to labour and bodies is the only asset for working class men. They participate in high physical risk-taking work to gain incomes, and therefore men are likely to die of occupationally related illnesses than women, also accidents and homicides are mostly been a feature of masculine rather than the feminine ( Feathersone, Rivett and Scourfield,

The low incomes, unemployment, poor employment and poor housing can lead to poor health. According to Wilkinson (1996), the widest gaps in health inequalities were to be found in those countries that had the widest gaps in incomes. It indicates that lack of income can cause poor health. For example: it can generate social stresses which can cause much psychological stresses that result in illness, and the poor have poorer access to have a comprehensive medical services. Also, although the poor want to modify the health-damaging behaviours, they are confined by the major resource of money (Kaplan et al., 1996). Furthermore, about the employment, lower class is more likely to have high rate of mortality and morbidity because of getting injury in accident in manual work. Also, due to the unemployment, it brings lots of anxiety and stress which can impair health status. Moreover, poor housing can cause several problems. For instance: It may influence the development of baby during pregnancy such as children’ lower birth weight and poor health (Bark et al., 1989).

Now, I would like to discuss why healthcare professionals are expected to be sensitive to the issue of health inequality. Healthcare professionals are ‘trained experts’ and accredited professional. They are the one who diagnose your illness, provide healthcare and promote healthcare. They need fully understand