Social roles and physical health: The case of female disadvantage in poor countries

Womenʹs culturally and socially determined roles greatly impair their health and that of their children through a complex web of physiological and behavioural interrelationships and synergies that pervade every aspect of their lives. Womenʹs roles also affect their use of health services since modern health care has been absorbed so successfully into traditional structures that families tend to allocate it, like food, according to characteristics such as sex and age. Change may be occurring through the agency of female education and a redefinition of familial relationships, both of which operate to improve womenʹs position, and hence their health. Health services could perhaps accelerate the process by revising their view of women as the natural guardians of their familyʹs health, and by drawing other family members, and particularly husbands, into their orbit.