Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Futurity, Katie Bohn evaluates the connection between gender equality and men's health, focusing on the harmful impact of gender roles and health.

· What role does income play in this topic? How can gender equality support men and societal expectations of them?  

· To learn more about gender equality and why it matters, check out this article. 

The researchers found that men who were financially dependent on their wives and who also had more traditional beliefs about gender roles tended to have higher “allostatic loads,” or wear and tear on the body as the result of stress.

Men who had more “egalitarian” or progressive views about gender seemed to be protected from this effect.

The results in the Journal of Marriage and Family are an example of how gender equality can benefit men as well as women, says Joeun Kim, a doctoral candidate in sociology and demography at Penn State.

“In a lot of discussions about gender equality, men are often left out of the conversation,” Kim says. “But it’s not just about women, it’s about true equality across gender. Men are also bearing the burdens imposed by society, for example, the pressure to be the family breadwinner. We know that men tend to die earlier than women, and this research speaks to how we can help improve health measures.”

The researchers say that while men being the main breadwinner of the family is an enduring social norm in the United States, the percentage of women earning more than 50% of their household’s income rose from 16% in 1981 to almost 30% in 2017, according to the US Census Bureau.

Read the full article about gender equality and men's health by Katie Bohn at Futurity.