It has been my absolute pleasure for the past two years to blog with Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. I hope what I have shared through my blogs has met the goal of being both diverse and educational while providing helpful information on health. As the blogs here move in a different direction, I will also be moving on. As my last blog post, I want to leave you with a challenge – a challenge that, in the spirit of this blog, is at the intersection of diversity, education and health, and, I believe that, if accepted, can help initiate change we are sorely in need of today. The challenge is based on a question that I have asked myself on and off throughout my life. This question has been on my mind more and more recently as a result of the political and social climate in the US and my work focused on women’s health. The question?
“Who is the ‘weaker sex?’”
For those who know me, I’m always asking questions, challenging norms. Especially interesting to me are questions that challenge norms regarding my identity, how I think and feel in relation to others, how others perceive me and how I perceive them. As a woman, I have been and always will be both professionally and personally invested in this question.
The definition of women as the “weaker sex” appears to be an extremely narrow perception/point of view based on the average man’s physical (muscular) size and strength compared to the average woman. When you broaden the definition of strong (or weak) and look at the data available for a complete set of strengths (or lack thereof), you reach a very different conclusion.
Using a broader definition of physical health alone, research proves women as the stronger sex. Studies show a consistent gender gap in health favoring women and that women, on average,
… live longer,
… suffer less and die less frequently from chronic diseases and health conditions,
