You’d have hoped that things like cell biology and medical administration
would be pretty gender neutral by now. But no, as the first of today’s two
quick blogs reveals, you have a much higher chance of dying from cancer if you
are a woman. Wherever you live.
Ever true to our multilingual raison d’etre we’ve two links for
you, one in Spanish by the admirable Enrique Alpañés of El
País and one in English by Andrew Gregory of The
Guardian [2] Both refer to an original study from The Lancet, but
you being such an ingenious lot, gentle readers, can track that down for
yourselves. Meanwhile, the two articles are packed full of statistics; but for
us, two killer points emerged:
A The sex differential is 800 000 deaths a year. If that
isn’t blatant injustice, we don’t know what is.
B (From Enrique) “Men lack the knowledge and ability to make informed
decisions on medical treatment” (hope our translation does your words
justice, amigo)
Does B explain A? Sadly, it probably does. The average chap is often
desperately short of emotional intelligence when compared to
the average gal. And the moral? When you’re doing any intervention-social,
infrastructural, medical, whatever-try and let the people you want to help take
over and do it for themselves.
[1]https://elpais.com/salud-y-bienestar/2023-09-27/las-desigualdades-de-genero-empeoran-el-acceso-de-las-mujeres-a-la-prevencion-deteccion-y-atencion-del-cancer.html
#cancer #public health #inequality #prevention #medicine
Learning, Science and Society 