ABSTRACT
Chapter 11 focuses on the role gender plays in health. It considers gendered perceptions of health and the extent to which the gendering of patients and physicians impacts the experience of illness and longevity.
Also looked at are the interaction of race, social class, and gender and their relationship to increased health risks. The chapter explores markers conferring manhood and/or womanhood, as well as the influence of hormones on men and women’s health. Additionally, attention is paid to gendered factors affecting mental health, with focus also given to the dark side of intimacy, the interaction between intimacy, gendered violence, and health, and how being intimate with the wrong person adversely affects health.
Also covered are gender ideals that impact health, cultural notions of beauty, diet disorders, body-image disturbances, the prevalence of gendered violence, how the body is used as a physical weapon in sport, as well as how gender influences the experiencing and expression of feelings.
