The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

384 Chapter 10

more likely to adopt the sick role. Thesick

role hypothesissuggests that sex differences

in medical care utilization are due to wom-

en’s greater tendency to adopt the sick role

(Nathanson, 1978). If women and men are

equally ill, but women are more likely to seek

help for symptoms, sex differences in mor-

bidity are really artifactual. It may be more

socially acceptable for women than men to

reduce their activities when ill.

One reason women may be more willing

to adopt the sick role is that women have fewer

fixed role obligationsthan men (Marcus

& Seeman, 1981). A fixed role is one that is

structured and difficult to reschedule. Men are

likely to have two fixed roles: worker and head

of household. Performance in these roles is

visible. Historically, women were likely to have

only one role, that of housewife, a role rela-

tively unstructured and invisible. A housewife

has few deadlines and can put chores off from

one day to the next; thus, women had fewer

constraints on their time and were freer to

restrict their activities and take care of them-

selves when ill. In other words, women’s social

role could accommodate illness. Another te-

net of the fixed role obligations hypothesis is

that men’s fixed roles keep them task focused,

whereas women’s lack of fixed roles allows

them time to ruminate about their problems.

This would explain why women perceive their

health as worse than men and why women re-

port more symptoms than men.

In an initial test of the fixed role hy-

pothesis, Marcus and Seeman (1981) ex-

amined the relation of role obligations to

health problems. Fixed role obligations were

measured in terms of financial responsibil-

ity (how much the person contributes to

family income), status as head of household,

and employment status. They found that

men had greater fixed role obligations than

women, and women had greater restricted

presence of a female experimenter than a male

experimenter, whereas women had similar

pain thresholds in the presence of female and

male experimenters. Gender roles also may ex-

plain why women’s pain reports are associated

with their facial expressions of pain, whereas

men’s are not (Kunz, Gruber, & Lautenbacher,

2006). The male gender role encourages the

inhibition of emotion, whereas the female gen-

der role encourages the expression of emotion.

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ There is no evidence that women suffer greater morbid-

ity than men because they over-report symptoms or are

in greater touch with their bodies compared to men.

■ One symptom that is more common among women

than men is pain. Women have a lower threshold and

tolerance for pain, report more pain, report more severe

pain, and suffer from more painful disorders than men.

■ Explanations for sex differences in pain include biology,

psychological factors such as coping, and social factors

such as gender-role norms.

Illness Behavior

Illness behavior is often referred to as adopt-

ing the “sick role,” or labeling a symptom as

illness and responding to it. Sick role behav-

ior includes restricting activities, getting bed

rest, taking medication, and seeking the help

of health care professionals. These are all ac-

tivities that women do more than men.

Implications for Morbidity

These sick role behaviors are frequently in-

cluded in indices of morbidity. Thus one

reason women have higher rates of mor-

bidity compared to men is that women are

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