This study examines associations between indicators of gender equality and public health. We compare Swedish municipalities on nine indicators in both the private and public sphere, and an additive index, and study the correlations with indicators of morbidity and mortality. The hypothesis that a higher level of gender equality is associated with a convergence of health outcomes (life expectancy, sickness absence) between men and women was supported for equality of part-time employment, managerial positions and economic resources for morbidity, and for temporary parental leave for mortality. Our main finding is that gender equality was generally correlated with poorer health for both men and women. Our conclusions are tentative due to the methodological uncertainties. However, the results suggest an unfortunate trade-off between gender equality as we know it and public health. Sweden may have reached a critical point where further one-sided expansion by women into traditionally male roles, spheres and activities will not lead to positive health effects unless men also significantly alter their behaviour. Negative effects of this unfinished equality might be found both for women, who have become more burdened, and men, who as a group have lost many of their old privileges. We propose that this contention be confronted and discussed by policymakers, researchers and others. Further studies are also needed to corroborate or dispute these findings.
It has been proposed that the gender order, loosely defined as the structure of gender relations in a particular society (Connell, 1987; Harding, 1986), is an important determinant of gender differences in health (Chapman Walsh, Sorensen, & Leonard, 1995; Courtenay, 2000a; MacIntyre, Hunt, & Sweeting, 1996), and also that increasing gender equality may contribute to improvements in overall levels of public health (Kawachi, Kennedy, Gupta, & Prothrow-Stith, 1999). Indices of women's status in political participation, economic autonomy, employment and earnings, and reproductive rights, have been used in two US studies to examine the effect of relative gender equality on public health (Chen, Subramanian, Acevedo-Garcia, & Kawachi, 2005; Kawachi et al., 1999), and a country comparative study found that the strength of patriarchy was associated with male mortality (Stanistreet, Bambra, & Scott-Samuel, 2005). Moreover, a WHO study of school-aged children found that countries with a low gender development index score (UNDP, 1995) had a larger gender difference in health complaints (Torsheim et al., 2006). In this study, gender equality is defined as more or less similarity between women and men in every sphere of human life, including the private sphere (Moller Okin, 1989). Given this definition, few earlier studies have examined the relationship between gender equality and public health.
