ABSTRACT
Gender has long been accepted as an important dimension of health inequalities, and more recent research and policy development have begun to focus on men ’ s disadvantage in health as well as women ’ s. 1,2 From an international perspective, analysis of morbidity and mortality data 3,4 show that countries differ with respect to overall life expectancies and the principal causes of death, but a common feature is that men ’ s rate of premature death is still higher than women ’ s across the majority of disease states and that there are also significant differences between men depending on cultural and socioeconomic circumstances.
