“Being born female is dangerous for your health” --EM Murph
Health is an all-encompassing field. The health of a people effects and is affected by every other factor in a society, from politics to economics to education to social relationships. Above all, however, it’s affected by inequality, which can vary by geographic area, income, administration region, urban/rural residence, gender, sex, and ethnicity.
SexismSexism is a major factor in life expectancy, and it alone can drop the average life expectancy drastically, because sexism doesn’t affect only women. Women’s health is often overlooked or completely ignored in most countries, which is incredibly detrimental due to the unique health issues, even unrelated to reproduction, that affect primarily women. This leads to a lower life expectancy for women, but also a dramatically lower life expectancy for children.
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HealthcareWhen women’s healthcare is poor, women are less likely to survive childbirth and more likely to die shortly after if they do. A study in Zambia estimated that if only pregnancy-related deaths could be decreased, life expectancy for Zambian women could increase by over 3 years. This does not even take into account the impact on the life expectancy of children. Maternal mortality rates lead to infant mortality rates, because when mothers die, children are far less likely to survive without them, plummeting the life expectancy of the nation. It is known that 90% of all death in children below age 15 occur in children below the age of 5, whose survival depends on the knowledge and survival of their mothers.
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Life ExpectancyLife expectancy does not stand on its own. An increase in education, especially among women in underdeveloped countries, dramatically increases life expectancy. A child born to a mother who can read is 50% more likely to survive past the age of 5 than a child born to an illiterate woman -- an age responsible for 90% of children’s deaths. It has also been estimated that just one additional year of schooling for 1,000 women helps prevent two maternal deaths. An increase in income also leads to higher life expectancy, as it allows better access to healthcare and food that may reduce infant mortality rates. Therefore, it’s clear to see that each component of the HDI causes a ripple effect -- a low life expectancy rate in a nation does not only lower part of the overall HDI score, but it lowers the scores of the other components as well, and vice versa.
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