The gains in women’s life expectancy are off-set by a large increase in the incidence of lung cancer among women, according to the section of health in the ABS book. It shows that women’s life expectancy in Australia passed 80 in 1991.
It is higher than Britain, the US and New Zealand, but lower than Canada France and Japan. Interestingly, Australian male life expectancy is higher in all these countries except Japan.
Life expectancy figures for males and females are converging after a peak of divergence in the 1980s due to higher male heart attacks.
The increase in lung cancer deaths among women, due to more women smoking, are shocking. They have risen from 8 per 100,000 in 1971 to 20 per 100,000 in 1991.
Tragically it looks like getting worse. Thirty-six per cent of women aged 18-24 smoke the highest percentage of any female age group.
Cancer is the leading cause of death for women (25.2 per cent); heart attack next (24.6) and stroke (12.8). Some statistics put stroke and heart attack together a circulatory diseases and put these as the leading cause of death.
On breast cancer, more preventative and education work needs doing: 31.4 per cent of women aged 18 to 24 surveyed in 1989-90 had not even heard of mammograms, falling to 14.7 per cent in the 45-54 age group. In the 54-64 age group 53.7 per cent had never been tested by mammogram, 33 per cent had never done a self-examination and 26 per cent had never had an examination by a doctor.
Cervical cancer preventative work was better: 70 per cent of women had had a pap spear within the past three years, 42 per cent in the past year, but 14.5 per cent were untested.
Women were better than men at using sun-block: 70 per cent against 51 per cent using protection when needed.)Overall, women reported more illness then men. The National Health Survey had 79 per cent of women reporting illness in the previous two weeks compared to 68 per cent of men. Women had more headaches than men (17.3 to 11.5), more arthritis (16.5 to 10.0) and more hypertension (13.1 to 9.6). While the common perception is that men are the heart attack victims, the incidence is similar for men and women. Women have slightly fewer heart attacks, but a lot more strokes than men.
Among disabled people aged 60 or more living in households, 87 per cent of women needed some help compared to 60 per cent of men.
The good news for women is the substantial decline in maternal death rates over the past 30 years, from 30 per 100,000 confinements in 1964-65 to five per 100,000 now.
Since 1979 there have been 8430 live births following assisted conception in Australia and New Zealand. The rate of infertility is difficult to measure, the book says. It is like other health issues.
“”Many of the current issues in women’s health in Australia are not readily amenable to statistical inquiry,” the book said. “”Such issues include menstrual problems, secondary infertility, common and restricting ailments of ageing, pharmaceutical drug misuse, emotional and mental health, occupation health of home-workers, violence against women and the role of women as unpaid carers in the community. Little or no data are available to consider the implications of these problems adequately.”