Just a little note on that boy child thing

We note that there’s a complaint about how male focused health care is. Women are simply ignored:

Finally the UK has noticed its rampant sexism in healthcare. What now?

Analysis: acknowledging the shocking female health gap is only a first step – ministers must put money into reversing it

The 50% of men who die with prostate cancer (note, with, not of) might observe the funding concerning breast cancer and emit a little hollow laugh at that.

In many countries men face greater health risks, but not in the UK. A study from Manual, a wellbeing platform for men, has found the UK has the largest female health gap among G20 countries and the 12th largest globally.

Now that is an interesting finding given that the largest gaps against females are found in those places with the greatest equality - the Scandis and Holland. It’s even possible that what is being measured isn’t what they think is being measured.

We’d also suggest that there’s a pretty simple explanation for this:

The inequalities start well before women make it to their doctor’s surgery. Women are routinely underrepresented in clinical trials,

Before the routine use of chemical contraceptives no one really did want to do medical experiments on a woman who was, or might be, pregnant. Which was any woman of fertile age in a sexual relationship. Thalidomide showed the dangers of that. Today the answer might be considered more sexist but still true for all that. “Scientists, would you like to try your new medicaments on a population with wild hormonal swings?” And we think we know the answer “Umm, thanks, we’ll do it on the others first, get to that later. Please.”

It’s even true that drug trials are conducted on volunteers and we’re aware that young men tend to be happy with taking more risk than any other group of the species.

But really irks our bile is that argument about the production of children itself - apposite given the day. Historically women lived shorter (peacetime at least) lives than men simply because of the risks of childbirth. Survive those and as now, lifespans for women were longer but that survival was a risky bet. Death in childbirth is now a rounding error in the mortality statistics - even if they did put Semmelweis in a lunatic asylum for pointing out how to make it so.

And, finally, we get to that point that women do indeed live longer lives than men.

But gender inequality in healthcare runs deep. Recognising, as the government has today, that system-wide changes are needed to tackle “decades of gender health inequality” is a vital first step yet, as Criado-Perez has said, women have been considered less important in healthcare as far back as Ancient Greece.

At which point, sorry, but we disagree with the entire premise here. But then what’s that got to do with the validity of a political campaign, eh?