Interesting to see that more companies targeting women's health are going through YC. I definitely think there is a gap there.. living with my girlfriend has opened my eyes to what sorts of things women have to go through from a health perspective that men never notice.
Social anecdotal evidence from the United States: according to TV commercials the most pressing female health problem is breast cancer, while the most pressing male health problem is Erectile dysfunction.
Lots of talk about 'healthy white males' and 'guys' on news.yc tonight. I understand women are in the minority, but we do exist.
Correction: I just re-checked the other post I was referring to and they said "healthy young male" not "healthy white male". My apologies for the misquote.
Our society has suffered massively from this disconnect. I honestly do feel like our computer and avatar-oriented society is fuelling it. Like the benefit for men you mentioned, I think women have a unique benefit too: a lot of women's healthcare knowledge has been suppressed, and developing these skills of bodily awareness helps with self-knowledge of those things.
It's fairly well-known that there is more medical knowledge about men, and women are affected in different ways by diseases, about which more knowledge is needed.
I think its more that society impose pressure on women to care how they look and being healthy, while imposing similar requirement on men to care about their ability to raise money. Dating site statistics shows a very strong correlation for successful profiles that follows those gender roles, where a man who focus more on about taking care of their body than their carer has a negative correlation, and women who focus more on their carer than taking care of their body has a negative correlation.
Genetic differences between males and females may account for some of the imbalance in how often people get sick, but incentives may also account for some. The article don't really explore that.
I suspect at the heart of this is that making it a women’s issue is more likely to move the needle in terms of attention and consequently funding. See breast cancer for example.
Is that health awareness and adherence learned behaviour though? Men have precisely zero need for healthcare until something goes wrong, but women have various screening programmes as well as contraceptive and maternity/children needs, among other things. This keeps them in regular contact with the healthcare system - where they can be offered unrelated services and advice - throughout their lives.
Female problems? Are you serious, that is a pretty negative way to describe health issues that might apply only to women. Why would you put it that way, it's just kind of dismissive.
Looks like the diseases in question there are diseases that are more prevalent amongst men than women. Not diseases that are exclusively for men over women. Perhaps there is a curve where if its a disease that can affect both genders there is a bias for men, and if it is exclusively to a specific gender then women get the benefit.
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