Stereotypes of gender- who said men cannot be good nurses

by Jing Wang

Dr.Watt mentioned in class that: “Gender is the social construction of the biological differences between men and women.”  When I sit down and think about words such as “women,” “female,” “feminist,” “men,” “male,” “patriarchy,” and “masculine,” I feel that yes, gender is “a learned and socially determined behavior.”  Then I start to reflect on how people tend to tag men and women in different countries and cultures.  In fact, it is unfair to both men and women when people assume how men and women should perform regardless of their individual characteristics.

 Adichie talked about the stereotypes that people have for feminists in South Africa: they should look sexless, single, aggressive and not feminine at all, which reminded of people’s attitudes towards feminists in China.  Feminists should be a neutral word but it is more of a negative word in China.  One of the famous sociologists specialized in gender studies in China, who is definitely a feminist, told me that never claim yourself as a feminist if you want to achieve success in this research field.  People will regard you as radical and aggressive and question your work as biased. 

 Another thing that Adichie mentioned was that some of her male friends do not understand why women still think there was gender inequality since the society has given tremendously more rights to women in the past twenty years.   I still remember the student Union election back in high school. Our director said that this school valued gender equality very much so we needed one girl there to show this.    Many people understand gender equality in this way. It is something that we should show and brag about. I do not care who this woman is and what she can do. All that I care about is that she is a woman and be there to show how much I value gender equality.  I am not denying that it has been great progress since the time when women could not vote back in the early 20^th century. But what I am saying is that it is far from enough.  This so-called equality has tricked us and blinded us with ignorance and indifference.   

All these stereotypes and tags are unfair to both women and men.  I question why men must be masculine, what is the whole point of this since we are not cavemen and will not starve to death if men did not go hunting.  And I do believe that there should be some cavemen who loved and were better at caring for babies and sewing while they were forced out to hunt.   Just like how people talked about “male nurses” in China. And to be honest, I doubted their ability to be nurses as well because I have been taught and seen a lot how women are born caregivers.  But it turned out they can be great nurses not only in ICU and OR, but also in neonatal department.  I was wondering how many good male nurses we have missed because of the stereotypes and to generalize it, how many good career women we have missed in traditionally men-dominated fields. Almost all of us tend to assume what women and men should do and be like to different extents.  Just to keep in mind, even baby steps from thinking in this way will take us to a better world. 

Heart Disease – The Silent Killer

By Kaboni Gondwe and Shaoqing Ge

The heart is an interesting organ in the body; it beats continuously even when asleep. Such a simple thing that signals the presence of life during embryonic period, signals the end of life at its cessation. While important to our survival, cardiovascular disease remains a silent killer. We have come through decades where heart disease was thought to be an issue for people who were overweight and obese or a problem for people with high socio-economic status. However, the burden of heart disease in global affecting people from all walks of life.

Heart disease has thus been described as the number one killer globally. And it is the 2nd leading cause of death in developing countries.

http://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/healthprotection/ncd/about.html

Dr. Bloomfield mentioned how developing countries are challenged by the dual burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. The epidemic of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular/heart diseases has dramatically increased in recent years. In countries where resources are limited and are unaware of their risks for heart disease the people die without understanding why someone who looked perfectly normal could just collapse one day and die. In Malawi, most sudden deaths in the rural areas are usually thought of as witchcraft and gaining weight was for a long time viewed as a sign of wealth and peace. There was an incident where a man in the urban area felt a sharp pain in his chest while driving, he rushed to the hospital and he was in time to get the best treatment. This man was educated and was aware of the signs and symptoms, thus he knew he needed to seek medical attention and he survived. Other cases form the rural start with complaints of chest pain and headaches. People eventually die in their sleep with blood coming through their nose. “zitheka bwanji munthu oti anali bwino bwino dzuro lero muziti watisiya, ufiti” (How could someone who was fine yesterday die today, this is witchcraft). This lack of sensitization of the signs and symptoms is bound to result into more deaths that could have been prevented.

The problem of increasing cases of cardiovascular disease has equally affected developed countries like China. In China, the prevalence of diabetes among Chinese adult population has increased from less than 1% in 1980 to 11.6% in 2010 (Xu, Wang, He, & et al., 2013). China has the largest population in the world, with an estimated 113.9 million diabetic adults (Yang et al., 2010). Cardiovascular disease has also become a chronic problem for Chinese population and a challenge for older adults whose health is already diminishing. Shaoqing’s grandmother, an 80 year old Chinese lady, has lived with hypertension for 30 years, had stroke around 20 years ago and developed atrial fibrillation around 5 years ago. She now controls her situation with medicines and exercise regularly. However this was not the case when she initially diagnosed with hypertension, she was a regular smoker back then and she absolutely had no idea of self-management. The only thing she knew was she would not die soon only with hypertension. This situation was not changed until she had that stroke tragedy; she then realized the importance of self-management, such as diet, exercise and medicine. However, as age grows, the situation kept deteriorates to arterial fibrillation but just slower.

These stories reveal that behavior change will not happen suddenly; it is highly related to education and self-awareness. Strengthening education is especially valuable for countries with limited resources, which is the case for most developing countries. Back 30 or more years, people were not aware of the relationship between smoking, salty diet and cardiovascular diseases, now even though this can be a common sense to some people but can still be unfamiliar to people in certain lower-income countries and areas.  We believe this is both a challenge and opportunity for stakeholders, practitioners and global health researchers, to provide information, technology, and treatment.

References

Xu, Y., Wang, L., He, J., & et al. (2013). Prevalence and control of diabetes in chinese adults. JAMA, 310(9), 948-959. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.168118

Yang, W., Lu, J., Weng, J., Jia, W., Ji, L., Xiao, J., . . . He, J. (2010). Prevalence of Diabetes among Men and Women in China. New England Journal of Medicine, 362(12), 1090-1101. doi:doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0908292