Changing environmental conditions and genetic adaptations may explain how penguins radiated and expanded their geographic ranges to encompass diverse environments.
Image credit: Aurora Fernández Durán (photographer).
New Research In
Physical Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Edited by Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved September 30, 2020 (received for review July 8, 2020)
Significance
Greater autonomy afforded to women in matrilineal societies has been hypothesized to benefit women’s health. Among the Mosuo, a society with both matrilineal and patrilineal subpopulations, we found that gender disparities in chronic disease are not only ameliorated but reversed in matriliny compared with patriliny. Gender disparities in health and chronic disease can thus be tied directly to cultural influences on health, including inequalities in autonomy and resource access between men and women.
Abstract
Women experience higher morbidity than men, despite living longer. This is often attributed to biological differences between the sexes; however, the majority of societies in which these disparities are observed exhibit gender norms that favor men. We tested the hypothesis that female-biased gender norms ameliorate gender disparities in health by comparing gender differences in inflammation and hypertension among the matrilineal and patrilineal Mosuo of China. Widely reported gender disparities in health were reversed among matrilineal Mosuo compared with patrilineal Mosuo, due to substantial improvements in women’s health, with no concomitant detrimental effects on men. These findings offer evidence that gender norms limiting women’s autonomy and biasing inheritance toward men adversely affect the health of women, increasing women’s risk for chronic diseases with tremendous global health impact.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: adamzreynolds{at}unm.edu or smattison{at}unm.edu.
Author contributions: A.Z.R., K.W., H.L., M.K.S., T.B., and S.M.M. designed research; A.Z.R., K.W., C.Y.S., M.S., and S.M.M. performed research; A.Z.R., K.W., and P.L.H. analyzed data; and A.Z.R., K.W., M.E.T., P.L.H., M.K.S., K.E.S., and S.M.M. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2014403117/-/DCSupplemental.
Data Availability.
All study data are included in the article and SI Appendix.
Published under the PNAS license.
References
Log in using your username and password
Log in through your institution
You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.
If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.
Purchase access
You may purchase access to this article. This will require you to create an account if you don't already have one.
Matriliny reverses gender disparities in inflammation and hypertension among the Mosuo of China
Sign up for Article Alerts
Article Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Anthropology
- Social Sciences
- Anthropology
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
In the United States, mortality rates and life expectancy were worse for Blacks during nonpandemic years than for Whites during the COVID-19 pandemic, a study finds.
Image credit: Pixabay/PIRO4D.
Genetic insights could help shore up populations of a rare dog species thought to be nearly extinct in the wild.
Image credit: Anang Dianto (photographer).
QnAs with Enquye Negash, Zeresenay Alemseged, and Jonathan Wynn
Top Left: Image credit: Dikka Research Project. Top Right: Image credit: Alem Abreha (photographer). Bottom: Image credit: Dikka Research Project.
Researchers reveal key details of how the heat shock protein mechanism disassembles the α-synuclein amyloids linked to Parkinson’s disease.
Image credit: Rosenzweig lab, Weizmann Institute of Science.