Mental health effects of gender bias

 Since the dawn of civilization, we, as a society have been so obsessed with the idea of classification that we classified all that we saw and felt, be it colors, toys, career paths and even emotions. When we couldn’t see anything else to divide it on the basis of, we took the trait we saw the most and segregated them all on the basis of gender and somehow gave birth to the evil of gender inequality and discrimination.

What is gender inequality?

Gender inequality is the social phenomenon in which men and women are not treated equally. It is a practice that causes one sex or gender to be routinely privileged or prioritized over another.

Unequal treatment of individuals based on gender has led to negative consequences in various areas of society, including economical, medical, developmental and mental. The area that somehow gets most looked upon is the negative effects that the gender bias is having on the mental health of all individuals.

Gender bias and mental health

Men and women both show variety of reactions to the gender bias and stress they face. While women are more likely to respond with affective disorders, men tend to get behavioural disorders which affect them as well as the people around them. Due to increased gender bias towards women, they are twice as likely as men to suffer from mental illness.

Gender discrimination puts the modern women in such situations that she has to divide herself between personal and professional duties so strictly that her mental health begins to crumble. On top of that, the prospect of lower pay as compared to men, sexualization in all fields of life and domestic expectations, the women falls prey to internalized disorders like that of depression and anxiety.

Men, being the supposedly privileged gender are still in the clutches of gender bias. Society has put so much pressure of being the better and stronger gender and being the bread-earner of the family that they forget to live for themselves and start considering emotions as something not meant for them. Due to all this, more often than not they turn towards substance abuse and antisocial behaviour.

The LGBTQ+ community faces so much discrimination based on their gender and sexual preferences that most of them show higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder(PTSD). 

By Rimjhim Gautam