ABSTRACT
Being a woman is, it could be argued, a risky business. Women in both Western and non-Western societies appear historically and often currently to have been systematically disadvantaged across almost every aspect of public and private life: in terms of, for example, economics (Olsen and Walby, 2004), education, political representation (Sayers, 1982), career prospects (Wager, 1998), unequal divisions of labour both inside (Dryden, 1999) and outside (Ussher, 1991) the home, subjection to domestic violence (Garimella et al., 2000) and some forms of violence outside of the home (Liebling, 2004) and, perhaps not surprisingly therefore, also in terms of health and mental health status (e.g. Stoppard, 2000; Ussher, 2000). Women, it seems, have been and still are more likely than men to experience mental health problems.
