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This study seeks to determine the association between gender role attitudes about childcare, utilization of parental leave policies and parental/infant preferences, on the one hand, and the distribution of childcare in the families of assistant professors with children under two on the other. Both utilization of paid parental leave policies by men and men’s belief in non-traditional gender roles are associated with higher levels of participation in parenting tasks. However, even those male professors who take leave and believe in non- traditional gender roles do much less childcare relative to their spouses than female professors do. This result holds even when the male professor’s wife works full time. Our results suggest that one reason why female professors do more childcare may be that they like it more than men do. The association of enjoyment of childcare with gender role attitudes or leave-taking status is not statistically significant, which suggests that sex differences in the enjoyment of childcare will not be easily changed by changes in policies or gender role ideology. Accordingly, when exploring the stickiness of gender roles with respect to infant and toddler care, it would seem prudent to consider biological and evolutionary explanations as well as those focusing on institutions and gender ideology. Having more women in the workforce has not eradicated traditional gender roles because men have not contributed in the domestic realm to the extent that women have contributed to family income through paid labor. This study demonstrates that male tenure-track professors with a young child do significantly less childcare relative to their spouses than their female colleagues. It also suggests that neither changing the attitudes of men and women about appropriate gender roles nor offering paternal leave to male professors will bring about equality between the sexes in the division of childcare, at least when children are infants or toddlers. Six men in our study took paid leave, had an egalitarian ideology about the division of household labor, and were married to women with full time jobs. By their own reports, none of these men did as much as half of the childcare.

Our results suggest that one reason why female professors do more childcare may be that they like it more than men do. This conclusion is possible even though the vast majority of female respondents and a clear majority of male respondents believe that husbands and wives should share childcare equally. Gender ideology about care may be less important than feelings on these matters.

Of course, the validity of our study conclusions is limited by the fact that performance of childcare is measured by self-report. It would be useful if future studies validated the current results by measuring time on tasks by other commonly used measures such as outside observation or random sampling of tasks done in a day via the use of beepers. 

According to the principles of Gender Medicine men and women, for their biological diversity, also have different sensitivity to certain diseases and respond differently to certain treatments. It would seem a trivial consideration, but until now little attention has been devoted to these issues. Suffice it to say that no ‘leaflet’ of drugs includes different doses for males and females, while everyone knows that, for example, certain substances such as alcohol have a greater impact on women’s metabolism than on men’s (and it is not just a problem of weight).

Studies to determine gender differences began years ago mainly on adults. The first systematic attempt to bring order into the chaos of research in this field was made in the subject of Psychology in 1974 by Maccoby and Jacklin. Summarising the results of over 1,400 empirical studies on 80 personality traits and cognitive abilities, the authors concluded that it was possible to see differences in a consistent way only in the following cognitive domains: language, in which women were considered to have greater competence, visual-spatial and mathematics, in which instead men were found to be more skilful. In terms of personality, men also appeared to be generally more aggressive than women, both physically and verbally.

Subsequent studies have essentially confirmed these results by extending the analysis to more complex aspects such as attitudes, cognitive styles, interpersonal aspects etc.. However, these differences are not expressed exclusively in neurocognitive and psychological fields, but also in a broader context involving multiple organ systems in various organic and functional expressions. This diversity can be present in children even in the earliest stages of their life.

Moreover, the main scientific explanations of gender differences in a wider scope of psychological and somatic factors lead to biological factors: hormonal, genetic and evolutionary causes have been called into play to demonstrate that men and women are different in their structure not only the psychobiological basis of the Central Nervous System, but also in other parenchyma during the development and accretion phase, beyond the obvious physical and physiological differences. This paper covers the main steps that led to defining the concept of “Gender Medicine” during adulthood and then extrapolate this concept also for newborn infants, children and adolescents, a field in which some issues are well known and others are being developed.

Over the years, medical research has identified an important group of diseases mainly of adulthood, and interesting several districts that have a higher expression in a gender rather than in the other. A short list of these diseases, an approach in which “gender” has meant a better understanding and better treatment, is described below. 

This review has been developed to discuss important variables that have been largely overlooked in the study of functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGID), namely gender, age, society, culture, and the patient’s perspective. These variables should be included in the design of research protocols to provide a more comprehensive understanding of these disorders from both a theoretical and a methodological perspective. Failure to consider these variables may result in an overly simplistic and incomplete interpretation of research data. The majority of studies that are discussed focus on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) because it is the most studied of the FGID. We also recognize that knowledge generation and transfer has been traditionally given to the “expert,” who is usually a scientist or clinician rather than the individual who has the specific condition under study. For these reasons, this review starts with the patient’s perspective. 

To advance the field of FGID, the following are sug- gested.

From a Research Perspective

1. Studies to identify positive aspects of patient–provider interactions that improve outcome should be performed and include recognition of the patient’s perspective, cultural and gender sensitivity, and implementation into patient care programs.

2. Studies using quantitative and qualitative methods are needed to better understand the patient’s illness experience and his or her views of the health care system.

3. Studies of varied populations around the world should be performed with appropriate tools to measure cul- tural and societal influences.

4. Studies evaluating sufficient numbers of men with IBS, and also making comparisons between healthy men and women, are needed to determine if gender differences in FGID are disease specific.

From a Clinical Practice Perspective

1. Recognize that FGID patients view their conditions as illnesses associated with uncertainty, stigma, and social isolation. Physicians can help patients to manage their condition by eliciting and addressing patient concerns; offering a positive diagnosis; providing clear, understandable, and legitimizing explanations of the disorder; and helping identify factors within the context of the patient’s own illness that he or she can influence and control.

1. There are a number of sex- and gender-related factors that may impact the clinical symptoms and response to treatment of IBS and should be considered, for example, gender role, sociocultural differences, hormonal effects such as menstrual cycle variation, and biological differences influencing gut function and treatment response.

2. Both men and women in clinical settings have psy- chological issues that may need to be addressed and there is a possibility that men may not do as well with psychological treatment as women.

3. Recognition and understanding of the association be- tween culture and health are also important for pa- tient care. It may be helpful to discuss with patients any cultural issues that may impact their clinical presentation or management of their condition. In addition, medical training and continuing medical education should include and emphasize cross-cultural competencies. 

The “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is a vision of a future promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in which cyber-physical systems technologies control and transform how people interact with information and the physical world around them.

The WEF vision promises large-scale socioeconomic benefits — in healthcare, manufacturing, energy, transport — achieved by creating new markets and new business models and values from advances in manufacturing and digital technologies. Automation and artificial intelligence are expected to take center stage. However, WEF admits this will create new socioeconomic inequalities as many lower-level skill jobs will be lost, affecting both women and men and resulting in a growing sense of individual disempowerment and insecurity.

The future envisaged by WEF contrasts sharply with the OECD vision of inclusive innovation proposed in 2013 in response to the fact that the poorest and the most vulnerable groups in society have not benefited from the economic progress made possible by technology. Many people around the world today have yet to experience the major technological advancement of the Second Industrial Revolution, namely access to electric power.

WEF asked 800 technology executives and experts from the information and communications technology sectors to identify the technology tipping points expected to occur by 2025. Their list, in order of likelihood:

• People wearing clothes connected to the Internet
• Robotic pharmacists in the US
• The first 3D-printed car
• Consumer products printed in 3D
• 90 percent of the population with regular access to the Internet
• Driverless cars
• First transplant of a 3D-printed liver

What all these choices share is that the quality of their performance will be influenced by sex-gender differences – at the biochemical, physiological and behavioral levels. The available scientific evidence to show when, why and how is extensive and recommends that such differences should be taken into consideration when research results are used to drive innovation and product development.