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In medicine, the term ‘gender’ is often mistakenly used as if it were synonymous with biological sex.
Yet gender is a wider concept than sex and refers to more than biological differences between women and
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men. Gender refers to the asymmetrical distribution of power between and sociocultural norms
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about women and men. In medicine, clinicians ‘do gender’ when they ask female patients about their
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family but do not ask the same of male patients. In this way, physicians are perpetuating a gendered view that
family matters are women’s issues. More so, when women’s health is interpreted to mean referring to
reproductive differences, a/k/a ‘bikini medicine’, clinical care falls short in failing to address the evidence that most
organs have sex specific differences that must be considered if optimal medical care is to be provided.

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