Socia l Factors: Women and Cancer

Numerous factors in the social environment may affect the incidence and mortality from cancer in women. Women's work roles, possible exposure to workplace hazards, social class, social roles, social stress, access to health care, and health behaviors are among the factors that act together to help determine a woman's health and well-being. Copyright © 1995 by W.B. Saunders Company A WOMAN'S personal physiological make-up, her lifetime of exposures to various environ-mental conditions, the social roles she assumes, and her overall economic ircumstances are among the factors that act together to help determine her health and well-being. For some of these factors, such as exposure to carcinogens on the job or cig-arette smoking, the relationship to cancer causa-tion is well established. For other factors, predom-inantly socioeconomic status, the evidence points more to social, rather than biologic, "causation" of disease. And for those factors related to psycho-social "stress, " neither a direct chain of causation, nor any plausible biological mechanism, has as yet been established that directly links them to cancer causation itself; although, as discussed below, the presence of social support networks may lower cancer mortality. This article discusses factors in the social envi-ronment that may affect the incidence of and mor-tality from cancer in women. The data presented focus on factors relating to women's work roles, both paid and unpaid, to issues of access to the health care system, and to possible exposure to workplace hazards associated with cancer isks