The Effect Of Life Expectancy - 1366 Words

The Effect of Life Expectancy in the Current Century The life expectancy has improved over the past century, due to advances in preventative care and control of infectious diseases, better and more reliable nutrition, housing, hygiene, and medical care. For instance, advances in medical technology in relation to such treatment of heart disease and stroke, as well as living healthier lifestyles, improvements in access to health care, and better overall health before age 65, resulted in continued improvements in life expectancy throughout the second half of the 20th century. Although life expectancy increased from 49 to 80 years due to life and health enhancements, it has caused gender, religion, income and racial group disparities that†¦show more content†¦According to the Functionalist Theory, there are a number of gender inequalities that women face, which are a product of traditional divisions in society. More specifically, for centuries men have been known to attend to objectively rewarded tasks such as wage earning, while women attended to more subjectively rewarded tasks such as child rearing. Although both types of labor are vital for society s survival, the tasks performed by men have always been more highly rewarded. From childhood, men and women are taught these traditional roles and have conformed to them. Functionalist Theorists explain that gender roles and their inequalities have changed somewhat in industrialized societies, however, the traditional arrangement remains in force in most societies. It is these inequalities that have led to population problems between men and women such as the rape of women and violence against women. In fact, women between the ages of 15 to 44 suffer more deaths from domestic violence than cancer, malaria, and road traffic. Also, there are some main differences in the types of health issues that men and women face that shows then gender disparities in developed countries. For example, women have the adde d issues of maternal mortality rates that indicate that more than one woman dies every minute of every day due to preventable complications of pregnancy, childbirth or unsafe abortion. Other hand, men s more risky