‘Men are leavers alone and women are worriers’: Gender differences in discourses of health

Abstract

This paper explores gender differences in health talk, how such talk is informed by discourses at a societal level and the extent to which talking about health is a way of ‘doing gender.’ It draws on in-depth interviews with 48 women and men in their twenties and thirties showing that gender influences both the way people talk about health and their willingness to engage in health talk. It explores the way cultural constructions of gender influence the propensity to take risks with particular reference to HIV/AIDs and recreational drug use and the extent to which discourses of risk inform health talk. We discuss how changes in the occupational structure and the associated influx of men into ‘women's’ work are associated with more ‘feminized’ masculinities and a recognition among some men of the male body's vulnerability. They are also associated with men's health talk becoming more like women's. We conclude that cultural constructions of gender not only have an impact on health talk but also on the regulatory power of discourses of risk and risk management.

Keywords:

• gender
• discourses of health
• masculinity
• risk
• doing gender
• health talk

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based, ‘Health, gender and generation: The effects of social ageing on health,’ was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (R000222810) with additional funding to Vivienne Walters from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.