The article analyzes the gender dimensions of health self-assessment as an important psychosocial indicator of health, which, despite a subjectivity component, is a reliable indicator of the health of individuals and is able to predict mor-tality. The authors make an attempt to outline the sociological dimensions of life strategies that characterize the perception of health as a socio-cultural value, healthy and risky behavior among men and women in modern Russia, connecting them with the gender variations in self-rated health. The article provides the reader with a series of explanations of differences between masculine and feminine attitudes towards health; most of them are based on the socio-cultural patterns developed throughout the history of the modern Western civilization. Both men and women face their specific risks connected with the social, economic, and cultural circumstances of their life. The authors undertake the detailed analysis of the gender differences in the behavioral patterns that can influence individual health in the modern Russian society. These patterns include the level of involvement into alcohol and smoking addictions, the proportion of men and women involved in regular physical activities, the compliance of regular nutrition and using a diet to improve the individual health, the frequency of consultations with physicians and medical aid, actions undertaken in case of health problems, and the level of consumption of private health insurance services.
The authors use data of the representative Russia Longitudinal Monitoring survey (RLMS-HSE), conducted by National Research University “Higher School of Economics” and ZAO “Demoscope” together with Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Institute of Sociology RAS. The official RLMS-HSE data are available at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/ rlms-hse and http://www.hse.ru/org/hse/rlms. The data collected within the 21st round of this monitoring in 2012 are taken for analysis.
The authors come to the conclusion that women’s lower health ratings determine the main strategies in their behavior, largely aimed to maintain and improve their health. At the same time men give higher ratings to their health but many of their routine actions aren’t focused on their health protection. Modern Russian men demonstrate higher involvement into alcohol and smoking addictions and rarely visit the physician in order to prevent or cure the disease. The only factor in which men slightly dominate is the proportion of involvement in physical exercise. These behavioral differences are connected both with the pe-culiarities of the social and economic situation in the modern Russian society, and with the subjective perception of the “healthy” and “unhealthy” behavior among men and women. read in PDF>>>
