Gender and sex

Social scientists make the distinction between sex and gender, whereby ‘sex’ refers to physical and biological differences and ‘gender’ refers to the social definitions of how women and men should behave under certain circumstances. Society ‘prescribes’ how the biological sex is transformed into the social gender. Thus biological men learn to behave in a male way and to carry out male tasks. The philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1960) summarized this transformation in the phrase: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ Every society produces norms, rules and expectations for each gender and these differ from place to place as well as over time. Consequently, what is regarded as male behaviour in one time and place can be seen as female in another. Thus society as a whole produces women and men.

Difference in mortality and morbidity

Women live longer than men, even in the least developed countries (Fig. 1). Men are more likely to die compared with women in the same age group, from the day they are born. Table 1 clearly shows differences in Scottish perinatal mortality statistics. The rates indicate that baby boys are more likely to die than girls. This pattern is the same for any other age group in Scotland and for other industrialized countries, and many developing countries.

Fig. 1 Life expectancy at birth by gender for selected countries

(from Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2006, with permission)

Table 1 Selected mortality and morbidity data for men and women, Scotland

Morbidity statistics for Scotland (Table 1) indicate that women are more likely to have had an acute illness in the previous 2 weeks than men. This gender difference is even more profound in the over-75 age group