Shreya Raghavan (@raghavanlab.bsky.social)

Women’s Health Equity Sex is often viewed as a piece of demographic data and used as a control variable in analysis. However, when discussing women’s health, a much deeper and more nuanced approach is required. Both sex and gender impact health outcomes; however, sex and gender are often incorrectly conflated and used interchangeably. For women, both sex (biological factors) and gender (social meanings and expectations) work in conjunction to impact their health. For example, women are socialized and expected to be caregivers to family members, both children and aging parents, which can have negative consequences for their health. This chapter covers several areas of health disparities—differences between men and women; differences between groups of women; and the health outcomes of different groups of women. It focuses on the gendered experiences of health and ways to address and alleviate some of these differences. https://connect.springerpub.com/content/book/978-0-8261-4952-7/part/part02/chapter/ch11