Gênero e saúde no Brasil: a (re)produção de desigualdades

Abstract

This current paperwork study assumes the existence of inequality in health between men and women, in Brazil, and thus, it presents as main objective to answer the following questions: a) Does this inequality present itself independent of the variable used to measure health? b) Do the regional characteristics of the country and their social differentials influence on inequality in health results by gender? Trying to reach answers to these questions, the intention is to analyze the social factors that impact on men and women health, from a social construction of gender, in the geographical regions of Brazil. The data that contribute to this analysis comes from a subsample of the 2008 National Survey by Household Sample (NSHS/BIGE), in which the supplementary questionnaire has investigated characteristics of Brazilian households residents health. Statistical techniques sustain in binary regression analysis and generalized linear logistic. We note that, compared men and women, there are demarcations of inequality in health in all geographic regions of Brazil. There is still a degree in health inequalities within their own categories "woman" and "man", when considering race, and such an increase inequality follows, respectively: white man, black man, white woman and black woman. The inequality in health by gender has manifested both when we use the self-assessment of health status variable, as the index of chronic disease. An exception occurred when analyzing across geographical regions, and in the self-assessment of health status, the only Brazilian region with indexes of inequality health worse than the northeast, was the northern region. In chronic disease index, all regions have presented higher rates when compared with northeast.