Health Sciences 1002A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 23: Health Canada, Racialization
22 Sep 2020
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HEALTH SCI CHAPTER 23 TEXTBOOK NOTES – PUBLIC POLICY, GENDER, AND HEALTH
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Introduction:
- Canada now recognizes gender as one of the dozen determinants of health
- The Canadian Institute for Health Research says that: “implementing gender and sex-
based analysis in health research is fundamental to achieving research excellence”
Gender-based analysis:
- “Sex” = used to refer to biological differences between men and women
- “Gender” = what is socially recognized as feminine and masculine
- These terms raised their own problems
1. Imply that biological factors can be separated from social factors and that
biological differences are firmly established
2. Also implied that biology is unchanging, outside history and influence
3. The distinction suggests that biological is irrelevant to an understanding of
social distinctions between males and females
4. Neither sex nor gender is one/two variables with clear lines between two
sexes and two genders. Rather, they are continua along which we can find
multiple variations.
- Gender-based analysis means being constantly aware of the social shaping and
evaluation of sex that makes it a gendered construct
- Gender-based analysis begins with the recognition that all populations are gendered,
and that people experience their worlds and are treated in their worlds on the basis of
gender
- Gender-based analysis means recognizing how gender shapes and is shaped by
conditions, practices, and relations
- A gendered analysis in health and healthcare requires the assessment of causes,
processes, and consequences by gender, “taking into account the context of individual’s
lives”
- Requires beginning with the assumption that there are gender differences in how we
live, work, and play, as well as in our power and resources. These differences have
consequences for our health, our care and care work, our symptoms, our treatments,
and our outcomes.
Gender-based analysis and women’s health:
- Much of the gender-sensitive research and policy in Canada has focused on women
- It was the women’s movement that began demonstrating how gender and assumptions
about gender permeate policy and practice, and do so in ways that assume male norms,
standards, and subjects
- “One-eyed science” = tradition science that only looks at impact on males
- Gender matters in everything
- A great deal of health behaviour, healthcare, and other health processes involves
relations between women and men
o Power relations in particular have played a major role in the analysis, with an
emphasis on the subordination shared by most women
HEALTH SCI CHAPTER 23 TEXTBOOK NOTES – PUBLIC POLICY, GENDER, AND HEALTH
2
o It should be noted, however, that gender-sensitive research is not necessarily
comparative
- What works for women doesn’t necessarily work for men, and vice versa
o This does not mean ignoring men’s health, but it does mean recognizing that
male health has been considered the norm and that men often have more power
- What benefits women also frequently benefits men as well
o One example is the pressure to limit hours of work for doctors, which is often
blamed on women moving into medical jobs. With more restrictions on demands
for their time, male doctors, too, can now see their children
- Without a knowledge base that takes gender into account, we cannot determine and
address inequity
- Canada established a Women’s Health Bureau within Health Canada, a Centres of
Excellence Programme for Women’s Health, and a Canadian Women’s Health Network
o However, under the Conservative government federal funding has been
withdrawn from Centres of Excellence Programme for Women’s Health and the
Canadian Women’s Health Network
▪ As a result, only 2 centres remain and one of them is very precarious;
there is no longer a federal Women’s Health Bureau
- Women worked equally hard to ensure that one of the federally funded Canadian
Institutes of Health Research focused on gender, with a mandate “to support research
to address how sex and gender interact with other factors that influence health to
create conditions and problems that are unique, more prevalent, more serious or
different with respect to risk factors or effective interventions for women and men”
- Still have a long way to go
Gender and the determinants of health:
- It seems logical to begin a discussion of health determinants with biology and genetic
endowments, given that they clearly play a role in gender and are often assumed to be
the critical factors in health and illness
- In general, women and men have different bodies and these bodies help create
differences in risks and outcomes
- We are just beginning to learn about the ways in which biology and genetics influence
other aspects of women and men’s health
o For example, women are 2-3x more likely than men to develop lung cancer, even
when they don’t smoke, and this difference may be related to gene expression
- Biology is profoundly influenced by social and economic contexts, and influenced in
ways that can shape the way bodies develop and experience
o These contexts are unequally structured for women and men as well as for
different groups of women and men and for different individuals
▪ Age of puberty, for example, varies significantly among economic groups,
and women employed in some jobs cease to menstruate as a result of the
conditions in which they work
- “In societies where women’s status is closer to men’s, both men and women had better
health”
Document Summary
Canada now recognizes gender as one of the dozen determinants of health. The canadian institute for health research says that: implementing gender and sex- based analysis in health research is fundamental to achieving research excellence . Sex = used to refer to biological differences between men and women. Gender = what is socially recognized as feminine and masculine. Rather, they are continua along which we can find multiple variations. Gender-based analysis means being constantly aware of the social shaping and evaluation of sex that makes it a gendered construct. Gender-based analysis begins with the recognition that all populations are gendered, and that people experience their worlds and are treated in their worlds on the basis of gender. Gender-based analysis means recognizing how gender shapes and is shaped by conditions, practices, and relations. A gendered analysis in health and healthcare requires the assessment of causes, processes, and consequences by gender, taking into account the context of individual"s lives .
