Gender, Aging, and Health: Interrogating the Nexus
摘要
Nations today are on their mission to ensure “healthy aging” for the graying population. “Healthy aging” implies aging insulated against disease and disability and ensured with happiness and wellbeing. Women constitute two-thirds of the world’s aging population due to their higher life expectancy. They are often found to be bearing the disproportionate burdens of aging and health issues. Their limited role in healthcare decision-making, healthcare spending, and accessing healthcare facilities makes them vulnerable to health vagaries. Biological, psychological, social, and cultural determinants become the drivers of typical health issues faced by women. Public health policies often become nonresponsive to such women-specific challenges. This chapter focuses on the diversity of health issues encountered by women. It tries to thrust upon some of the social, cultural, psychological, and physiological conditions of women which ultimately fructify in bringing unhealthy aging to them. Finally, it attempts to search and suggest some policy imperatives to overcome these aging and health issues. The chapter has been divided into three sections. Section 1 identifies the typical gender frontiers of aging and health. Section 2 explores the determinants and drivers of women’s health, and Sect. 3 reflects upon the policy imperatives. The chapter is based on a descriptive and analytical framework and has taken into consideration the secondary literature.