Groupthink Pink
Thursday, October 2 2008
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I have written on this before, elsewhere, but for now let me say that if you’re a woman, and don’t know about breast cancer, you can go to the web page for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month to learn more. Here’s a start:
“Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, it’s estimated that About 178,480 women in the United States will be found to have invasive breast cancer in 2007. About 40,460 women will die from the disease this year.”
NBCAM is one of many charities raising awareness of – and research money for – breast cancer. In fact, if you take all the related charities listed in Charity Navigator and sum their revenues, you get a total of about $300 million per annum. That’s a lot of money – about a dollar per person in this country – raised from a number of sources. Some of it comes from runners and walkers, some from donations, and some from the nearly infinite variety of promotions and pink-beribboned products: pink appliances, paper towels and baby wipes, wines, tea, vacuum cleaners and so on. The funds raised work out to about $1700 for every woman who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.
Impressive as that is, compare it to this statement from a GAO report: “In the past 5 years alone, the federal government has spent about $3 billion on breast cancer research.” That works out to about $600 million per year, or $2 from every person in the country and $3400 for every breast cancer patient. Granted that the charities and advocacy organizations have a role in pushing for federal funding, but ultimately it comes down to votes: politicians know this is an important issue for female voters.
Welcome as their support may be, it’s really only tokenism. Don’t get me wrong: breast cancer is a terrible disease. But it’s only one of many terrible diseases that affect women in this country, and every dollar spent on breast cancer is a dollar that could be just as well be spent to help women more generally. Yet many of the same politicians who gladly vote pink still won’t do anything to address the real disparities in health care between men and women:
…women have greater difficulty affording health care services even once they are insured. On average, women have lower incomes than men and therefore have greater difficulty paying premiums. Women also are less likely than men to have coverage through their own employer and more likely to obtain coverage through their spouses; are more likely than men to have higher out-of-pocket health care expenses; and use more health care services than men and consequently are in greater need of comprehensive coverage.
The problem is that breast cancer has become a perverse synecdoche for women’s health in this country. It should surprise nobody that our mostly male politicians find it easier voting for breasts than for the whole woman, but the disease’s importance as a symbolic issue – not to mention a marketing device – means that it obscures a fundamental challenge facing millions of women: health care is expensive. And so the talk about sisterhood and empowerment, comforting though it may be, ignores the fact that all the pink ribbons and mammograms and genetic studies in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t afford the surgery and medicine, or if you have heart disease, or if your kid gets sick.
When Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over, we will be on the cusp of an important election. Both candidates – McCain and Obama – support the fight against breast cancer, but each has very different ideas about our health care system. If you’re worried about women – even just their breasts – you would do well to read up on the candidates’ proposals and talk about these issues with the women in your life. A health care system that is equitable towards men and women would help all women – including, but not just, breast cancer patients. That would be something empowering, even more so than a pink mixer.
And if you feel the need to express this idea in a t-shirt, try this: “My Eyes and My Vote Are Up There” printed across your chest, with an arrow pointing to your head. That’s free to you – run with it. You can even print it on a pink t-shirt, if you must.
One Ping