Introduction

We are living through a period of striking, gender-related social change in the West as traditional distinctions between the experiences of women and men are breaking down and being reconfigured in new, more complex ways. This has significant, but as yet largely unexplored, implications for health and illness. The long-established life expectancy gap between men and women appears to be closing in many affluent societies as men begin to ‘catch up’ with women. There are changes in the kinds of health problems that men and women suffer from, and commonsensical ideas about how men and women behave in relation to their health are in flux. Many men appear to be far more ‘body and health conscious’ than they ever were in the past and, while it may still be true that women ‘take more care of themselves’, there are perceptible changes in their so-called ‘health behaviours’, such as increases in cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, which are not simply confined to the young. Pointing to changes such as these – which are, as we will see, the tip of the iceberg as far as gender and health are concerned – is not to imply that men and women are now equal or even becoming more equal in life. Nor is it to suggest that their health is converging or becoming the same. Rather, new, more complex patterns of similarity and difference, equality and inequality are emerging from the ferment. ‘We literally embody the world in which we live, thereby producing population patterns of health, disease, disability, and death’ (Krieger and Davey Smith 2004: 92). The question is: ‘How can we understand this process?’