The Social Context of Women's Health.

HEALTH ISSUE: The discussion of health emphasizes the importance of analyses of social determinants of health. Social determinants permit the targeting of policies towards the social factors that impair or improve health. Two broad questions are considered: (i) what do we know about the social determinants of women's health? (ii) are there gender-related differences in health problems, and how we might explain them? KEY FINDINGS: While 'sex' may be used to denote the biological difference between women and men, it is an imperfect measure of 'gender'.

Gender differences in health: a Canadian study of the psychosocial, structural and behavioural determinants of health.

Gender-based inequalities in health have been frequently documented. This paper examines the extent to which these inequalities reflect the different social experiences and conditions of men's and women's lives. We address four specific questions.

Chronic stress and the social patterning of women's health in Canada.

Existing research on the social patterning of women's health draws attention to the significance of social roles and socioeconomic position. Although we know a great deal about health differences according to the occupancy of these positions, we know a lot less about why such patterns exist. This paper addresses this gap by examining the pathways through which social structure is linked to health using data from a 1994 Canadian national probability sample of women, aged 25-64 years.

The influence of work, household structure, and social, personal and material resources on gender differences in health: an analysis of the 1994 Canadian National Population Health Survey.

Data from the 1994 Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS) do not confirm the widespread assumption that women experience considerably more ill health than men. The patterns vary by condition and age and at many ages, the health of women and men is more similar than is often assumed. However, we should not minimize the gender differences that do exist and in this paper we focus on three health problems which are more common among women: distress, migraine and arthritis/rheumatism.