Go Red for Women

This is again a sort of placeholder for something I want to write about later: the Go Red for Women promotion for women’s heart health. Am I the only one who finds it irritating how much more emphasis there is on women’s health than men’s? — in particular, in the corporate world, both in workplace campaigns and ad campaigns, we’re told to wear red on February 7th. Yet, last I checked, women, as a whole, were healthier than men, especially as evidenced by their longer life expectancies.

Is the idea that men can’t be helped? That they can’t be persuaded to take better care of their health, or that more medical intervention won’t make a difference — that they’re doomed and there’s nothing we can do about it?

Is this a more subtle effect of the decline in marriage? — that in generations past, women would have been, on average, more concerned about the health of the men in their lives than is now the case?

Any ideas?