ON A DEEPER LEVEL....

2005-09-20

The tradition of male dominance over women in many societies may be one of the reasons men have a higher death rate, according to UK researchers.

In an analysis of statistics from 51 countries, they concluded that patriarchy --the systematic dominance by men over women -- may explain nearly half of the discrepancy between female and male death rates. The greater that the oppression of women was in a given country, the researchers report, the higher was the male death rate at any given age.

"These data suggest that oppression and exploitation harm the oppressors as well as those they oppress," the study authors conclude in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

It's well known that in many countries throughout the world, men tend to die at a younger age than women do, and have a higher death rate at all ages. In the U.S. and other industrialized nations, men tend to develop heart disease years earlier than women do, and before the age of 65, their rate of death from the disease is far higher.

In addition, men's rates of death from accidents, suicide and homicide are also markedly higher than those of women. The fact that men have traditionally been more likely than women to smoke, drink heavily or use drugs has been cited as one of the reasons for the discrepancy in death rates.
But the roots of these and other potentially life-shortening behaviors may lie in the "machismo" that is widely accepted as a social norm, according to Dr. Alex Scott-Samuel of the University of Liverpool, one of the authors of the new study.

Risk taking, aggression, competitiveness and suppression of emotions are all widely viewed as "manly" attributes in male-dominated societies, but in excess, Scott-Samuel told Reuters Health, are "clearly damaging and dangerous."

In addition, he noted, social expectations that a man have these qualities and "be the dominant sex" may create enough stress to take a toll on his health.

For their study, the researchers analyzed statistics from Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America. They focused on age-adjusted death rates for 1995, as well as male and female homicide rates, and gross domestic product per person -- a measure of national wealth.

Female homicide rates were used to gauge a country's oppression of women, as violence against women is considered an indicator of patriarchy in a society. The researchers found that female homicide rates, even with male homicide rates and national wealth factored in, strongly correlated with age-adjusted death rates for men.

For example, Russia had the highest female homicide rate, at 11.60 per 100,000 women, as well as the highest male mortality rate, at 1,560.60 per 100,000.

In Israel, which had one of the lowest female homicide rates -- 0.6 per 100,000-age-adjusted male mortality was 467.90 per 100,000. The U.S. had a female homicide rate of 3.80 per 100,000 women, and a male mortality rate of 669.40 per 100,000.

Homicide rates among women is an imperfect measure of societal patriarchy -- which is "by no means an easily definable, uncontested, or easily measured concept," the researchers acknowledge.

Scott-Samuel said he and his colleagues are now studying a wider range of patriarchy "indicators" in a smaller group of countries.

If male dominance is in fact shortening men's lives, the researchers conclude, then the higher male mortality rate worldwide could be seen as a "preventable social condition."

SOURCE: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, October 2005.