Gender and men’s health needs: Care from the perspective of healthcare professionals

Abstract

This article aims to analyse how health professionals’ conceptions of gender and masculinities impact the recognition of men's health needs and the practices of health care. This is a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with 17 health professionals working in primary health care and in two secondary health care services in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The analysis was conducted using the Method of Interpretation of Meanings. The results pointed to an association between men’s resistance to seeking health services and the perception of these services as feminized spaces. Health professionals were found to hold binary views that reduce the meaning of ‘being a man’ to a lack of self-care and care for others, in contrast to the perception of women as natural caregivers, which leads to an inability to adequately address men’s demands. Essentialist and binary conceptions, expressed through stereotypes based on a supposed ‘essence’ of manhood, hinder the identification of men’s health needs and foster care practices that tend to reinforce gender inequalities. This study contributes to rethinking daily health care practices and how therapeutic approaches for men are developed in the context of Primary Health Care, considering that masculinity is also socially constructed and reproduced.