here. - Canadian Women's Health Network

APPENDIX 2:ARE WOMEN SICKER THAN MEN?Women, Income andHealth in Manitoba60Women’s reported greater use of healthcare services has led to a generalacceptance of the idea that women aresicker than men (“women get sick, mendie”) and that women are more likely toseek medical attention than men. Theseideas are based on a combination of fact(pregnancy, labour and delivery areexperiences unique to women) andassumption (women are believed to bemore likely to seek help from experts thanmen). Some recent research has begunto challenge these ideas.For example, in Manitoba in 1994-95,the per capita cost of providing femaleswith health care services funded by themedicare system was approximately 30%higher than for men. In an article in theNew England Journal of Medicine,Cameron Mustard and othersdemonstrated that after removing thecosts of sex-specific conditions(including, for women, normal andabnormal reproduction, and for women andmen, diseases of the genitourinary systemand of the breast) and considering costsfor both physicians’ services and acutehospital care, that the costs of insuredhealth care services for women wereabout the same as for men. That is, thefemale:male ratio went from 1.3 to 1.0. 88The authors did find two important agespecificsex differences in health careexpenditures even after adjusting for sexspecificconditions and care in the last yearof life. Per capita health care expendituresfor elderly men were significantly higherthan for elderly women and expendituresfor physicians’ services were higher forwomen during their childbearing years.They hypothesized that these differencesmight be an artefact of measurement or,alternatively, related to sex differences inthe occurrence of illness or in care-seekingbehaviour or social roles. Particularly,women in childbearing years, who continueto have the main responsibility fororganizing health care for their children,may have increased opportunities for theuse of health care services. 89While costs of health services are onemeasure of illness, there is also someresearch how women and men differentlydescribe their own health and how that isperceived by health service providers.Macintyre and Pritchard reported on Britishstudy of volunteers attending a researchunit investigating the common cold. In adouble-blind process, the volunteers wereinoculated with either a virus or an inertsubstance. Their symptoms were thenassessed, evaluating the presence andseverity of their colds by both a trained,medically qualified observer and by theparticipants themselves. In this study,women were no more likely than mento assess themselves as having a cold,although the clinical observer wasmore likely to rate women than men ashaving a cold. Men were significantlymore likely than women to ‘over-rate’their cold symptoms compared withthe observer’s ratings. 90In another study, Sally Macintyre andcolleagues studied a group of 1710 womenand men in the West of Scotland, abouthalf of whom were in their late thirties andhalf of whom were in their late fifties.Participants were first asked the standardquestion used in the annual British GeneralHousehold Survey:Do you have any long-standing illness,disability or infirmity? By long standingI mean anything that has troubled youover a period of time or that is likely toaffect you over a period of time?They found no significant gender