Mallorie's Blog - Perspectives on Women's Health

Blog Four Watching the video, “Women and the World of Work,” was quite eye-opening and raised several questions for me. This video assessed how far our world has come for gender equality and women empowerment in the workplace over the past 20 years, and although much has been accomplished, the video describes how many barriers remain. For example, present day, the number of women working is still much lower than men- 77% of working-aged men around the world have jobs compared to only 50% of women. One woman asks, “What is society doing for us? If we want to work, we should be able to!” And she’s right. Why should women be any less likely to be able to work and have a decent job than men? While we have seen growth, one major setback we’ve seen in the past 20 years is that more young men and women (aged 15-24) are out of work than they were two decades ago. The global economy is improving, yet young people are less likely to have a job. Why is this? Are there fewer jobs availa...

Blog Three As a “natural worrier,” I chose option three for this blog post assignment. I visited the American Institute of Stress website and assessed their top fifty signs of stress, fully expecting to be able to relate to just a handful of them. I was shocked, however, when I realized just how many signs of stress I experience on a weekly basis. Out of the fifty signs they list, I experience twenty-four when I feel overwhelmed or stressed. That’s almost half of them! Realizing the large number of symptoms I experience when I am stressed got me thinking about the effect stress has on my overall health- not just my mental health, but my physical health as well. Frequent headaches, jaw clenching, dizziness, muscle spasms, fidgeting, stomach pain, and mood swings are only a few of the signs they list that I associate with stress. Do you notice that they are all physical symptoms? Stress doesn’t just affect us mentally and make us feel psychologically tired and anxious. It aff...