Women Live Longer than Men, New Study Finds: Is that True?

Recently when I was scrolling the google, stumbled upon a headline “Women may live longer but they have poorer quality lives than men, new study finds”: it seems okay to read but when I reached at the end to draw conclusion, make me little bit anxious, what was revealing let’s explore.

News Breakthrough:

Male live up to 69 years of age but female may reach up to 74 on average, this is not mine finding but reported by World Health Organization (WHO). But new studies has shown how sex and gender shape our health and age limit.

The new study tells that either male or female when interacting with variables such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, etc., increases the risk of different diseases and changes the life expectancy rate.

Further, this study explores that lower back pain, depression, and headaches are common diseases in females, affecting their daily routines. Men have more heart problems and car crash incidents than women. How both genders interact with society and how biological factors associated with them define behavior and shape their health.

How Healthy Life Period Shortened?

The study also shed light on healthy life periods of men and women, it says that most diseases that disproportionality affect females or males are depression, anxiety, and road incidents, which are helping variation in the life expectancy rate of both genders.

This period is related to age when gender norms and attitudes collaborate to reshape self-perceptions. But this point is not digestible to me as you also mostly seen these are common illnesses in both genders and are not just due to chromosome differences as highlighted by the report, also other worst issues have been ignored like unemployment, revenge thirst, suicidal cases, etc.

Data Collection and Presentation

The data collected to prepare this report is from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2021, which focuses on almost 20 conditions in over 200 countries that have the most health loss in genders over 10 years of age.

The method used to measure the health impact of these conditions is called Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), this method gives the sum of years of life lost due to premature mortality to the years lived with disability.

According to this formula, results showed that the healthy life years lost rate due to diseases was higher in men in 13 of 20 conditions. Related example taken from COVID-19 data where researchers have shown heart diseases affected much more men than women.

The remaining 7 conditions were highlighted in women with higher DALY rates than men and such cases include lower back pain, headaches, depression, dementia, HIV, anxiety, and muscular disorder.

Does Women Suffers Disproportionality?

Doctor Sara Guila Fida Kinori, who is a clinical psychologist and member of the Women's Health committee at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Spain, says that “Women don’t present as many life-threatening conditions as men, but they suffer disproportionality that significantly diminishes their quality of life”.

Further, she said that women and men are not biologically different but the culture and gender do determine these differences, which is why we need to focus on and investigate different approaches.

Final Words

Like mine Scientists behind the study admit that this finding has limitations as well. As the research and data are based just on gender proportionality and in general health impacts cannot be analyzed and estimated for sex-diverse groups.

This study gives the findings on just counting 200 countries which is little enough base for any solid research requirements but what for the whole universe where countless lives daily emerge and are lost?

You can take this report just for knowledge purposes and may not be applied in the practical world to conclude the mortality rate for gender perspective lives. But as the Scientists intend to present their findings based upon some research, we should respect their ideas and encourage them to make useful servings for mankind's welfare.