Higher Life Expectations Essay

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3. Biological causes of higher life expectations.

Following the assumptions by Van Parijs, we could also question whether women's higher life expectation could be due to biological reasons. In order to introduce this topic, we can use Paula Casal's Love not war. On the chemistry of good and evil. She develops during her article the main biological reasons for different life expectations by sex.
The major biological cause for this difference is the fact that women are seen as biological primary care-takers. Consequently, women develop several hormones and behaviors that enhance their life expectation by means of being more productive for the collective group and also for the type of hormones developed by motherhood. Nevertheless, this primary …show more content…

Conclusions.

Does this difference between male and female life expectations represent an injustice? Does this higher life expectation produce and advantage for women?
Following Van Parijs' article, he does introduce two objections that question whether this difference in life expectation could be seen as an advantage for women. On one hand Van Parijs remarks that differences within the life expectations leads to “inequality in the amount of domestic elderly care work performed by the two genders”, on the other hand, he present the possible solution of outsourcing of erderly care, but also estates that such a solution is improbable to be implemented.
As we can see, the consequences of a longer life are not as positive as it may seem from scratch. Longer lives mean, for women, developing new duties towards the others, such as the duty to take care of grandchildren and husbands. Nevertheless, since men do enjoy a higher quality of life due to higher incomes, to have a higher life expectation would actually have positive consequences.
Therefore, we can conclude answering to the second question introduced in this last section. Nowadays, to have a higher life expectation does not necessarily mean an advantage for

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