Gender Medicine: A Novel Interpretation of Equal Opportunities?

to allow women to achieve the same opportunities as males. More and \nmore doors have been opened to women, so that the most “masculine” \nactivities, such as army or security have allowed the participation of \nwomen. In particular, in Italy at this moment, medical students are about \n70% female. Despite the concept of "equal opportunity," medicine has \nrecently discovered that males are different from females, in terms of \npathophysiology and, consequently, different therapies are needed. \nMethods: Health spending has interesting differences when we compare \nthe male population to the female. The total pharmaceutical expenditure is \nsubstantially the same but, if we sub-divide them into categories, we find \nimportant differences between the two genders. Lifestyles determine the \nincrease in spending. Changing lifestyles and increasing sport leads to \nhealth savings. \nResults: The different distribution of sports for men and women can be \ninterpreted as a cause of the major spending of women vs. men. In Italy, \nthere has been a rapid increase in general and practitioners of sports \nrecognized by the Olympic Committee. \nConclusions: This gap is subsequently declined, but has not yet been \nfilled. The survey on sport, carried out by ISTAT in December 2000 as \npart of the research on leisure, indicates a rate of sportsmanship 37.8% \nfor men and only 22.6% for women.