As a proud feminist, I’m always happy to talk about the motives behind a woman’s actions. Whenever I do, some disgruntled man mentions how complex and mysterious women are, to which I earnestly reply, “No, no women are easy to figure out, it’s you guys whom nobody understands.”
But this time, I’m sorry to say, I’m entirely wrong — women are irrational, or at least when it comes to their sexual health. A Penn study that reveals women’s thought processes when deciding whether or not to to get the new HPV vaccine has just been released, and like any guy of my generation, I’m pretty much mystified.
The Annenberg School of Communication-sponsored research suggested that the way the vaccination was framed was a key factor in a woman’s decision to actually get the vaccine. This means that women are deciding whether or not to get a vaccine that could save their lives based on how it’s being presented to them.
When a sample of women read a description of the vaccine as protection against cervical cancer, 63 percent answered that they were likely to get the vaccine. When the vaccine was described, however, as a way to prevent cervical cancer and a sexually-transmitted infection (STI), that number dropped to 43 percent.
43 percent? That’s a ridiculously low number, especially when you consider that in the latter case the respondents were presented with more information: that the vaccine could prevent both cancer and an STI in three doses. What has possessed women to adopt such a blase attitude toward their sexual health?
Researchers said that the drop may indicate a woman’s belief that a vaccine against an STI may be simply unnecessary. Unnecessary? When 20 million people are diagnosed with HPV and 50 percent of the population is projected to acquire it sometime in their lives, it’s clear that this is the most welcome advance in medical care since the polio era.
The only way to fix this problem is to talk about it. Whether through education awareness programs or panel discussions, Penn Women’s Center and the Office of Health Education should team up to prove that even if women’s thought processes seem a tad muddled at the offset, our ultimate decisions reflect crystal-clear thinking.
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January 29th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Perhaps much of the hesitancy to get the vaccine is due to the high cost of several injections and also that the vaccine is so new that insurance companies don’t yet cover it. Also, my doctor advised me against getting it yet because it has not been used extensively enough to know all of the potential risks.