Representing gender in publications for diabetics

Abstract

In recent decades, increasing emphasis has been placed on health education to encourage people to take responsibility for their own health. Representations of health and illness for lay audiences are particularly important when the disease is highly prevalent, so prevention and effective management can make a significant difference to the overall burden of disease. Diabetes mellitus is such a condition.We report here on analysis of printed materials concerning diabetes for lay readers, concentrating in particular on content analysis of representations of gender in six years of Diabetes Conquest, the official quarterly magazine of Diabetes Australia. The magazine contains a mixture of medical authority and lay culture in which gender is represented in limited and largely conservative forms. Explicit attention to gender is almost entirely confined to reproductive and (hetero)sexual health aspects of diabetes and rarely addresses men. These limitations simultaneously reinforce conventional gender norms, and may restrict the reach and effectiveness of the publications to only those readers who identify with the forms of gender represented.

Key Words:

• diabetes
• health education
• gender
• sexuality