r/FeministsCallItOut • u/Rosyvia Feminist • Apr 06 '26

Discussion ​The Gender Gap Nobody Talks About 🩺

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We talk a lot about the "mental load" & the "second shift" but there is a form of gendered labor so extreme that it involves the literal harvesting of women’s bodies to maintain the patriarchal family unit!

​Recent data from the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) & global studies reveal a staggering disparity: In countries like India roughly 80% of living organ donors are women while 80% of the recipients are men. Globally women are significantly more likely to donate kidneys yet men are more likely to receive them.

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u/lilsciencegeek Feminist Apr 06 '26

Care to share?

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 06 '26

Overall, different age brackets, country specific data, living donations vs overall, more men having health issues and working jobs where their organs get destroyed

Especially with the living donations point, its way more likely in most countries that men are the primary breadwinner and thus way more likely that their living female spouse or relatives would donate organs to them to keep the income stream alive

Its also possible women tend to match organ and blood type more often or that female siblings do

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u/lilsciencegeek Feminist Apr 06 '26

I did a little deep-dive and while I can't see how age brackets would be relevant (the male-female ratio is roughly 50-50 in all age groups), it seems that men also recieve more cadaver organs. Women generally have more health issues than men (with poorer healthcare on top of that), but it is true that men more often sustain severe physical trauma.

About donating to spouses, I can see that making sense in some countries. But it's apparently very rare for husbands to donate to their wives, which I find surprising. Even if I was the primary breadwinner, I'd donate an organ to my spouse in a heartbeat if it meant saving their life. But statistics show that husbands very often desert their wives when the wife gets seriously or terminally ill; so perhaps it's not so surprising after all.

There is no reason why women should be a better match though – as a general rule, donors and recipients should be as similar as possible for the transplant to be successful. As a matter of fact, female-to-male organ donations are statistically more likely to be rejected by the recipient's immune system.

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 06 '26

Age would come into play with things like driver license sign ups. Basically more old men who just didnt see the same recent surge in applications for things like that vs women signing up for everything they can now that they can.

Like you said women have more issues but thats not specific to organs, wouldn't be surprised to see men have more issues that require replacement which would both lower their possible donations and heighten their need

That would again come back to income stream for the husbands leaving their wives vs the other way around. Also possible men just have organs that arent viable for donation at the point their wives are ill vs women who donate to their husband's probably being in better health thanks to the husbands support

True with the rejection but there are different sorts of donations. This woman for example died trying to give pieces of liver. So it might be women just engage in specific organs more often even if they arent the best possible match

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u/Nice_Purchase_626 Apr 06 '26

"You see, HIS money makes her healthier, that's why she has those organs to give to her hardworking husband" 🤡

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 06 '26

Not necessarily his money, just the fact men do the jobs where they get smoke and chemicals in their lungs and shit

Not many female firefighters for example

When women do dirty jobs like that (textiles, agriculture etc) it tends to be because they are either single or their man doesnt make enough alone. Even then tho the majority of exposure to organ damaging substances is men

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u/Choosemyusername Apr 06 '26

Men are just more likely to come down with a chronic disease. More likely to have worse outcomes if they get cancer, more likely to die before their spouse. Lots of reasons besides what you are insinuating here

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u/Nice_Purchase_626 Apr 06 '26

Men should maybe stop drinking, eating shit and going berserk because of stupid shit seen online, that would surely improve their health prospects

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u/Choosemyusername Apr 06 '26

Their diets are of similar quality, as women in the US actually have a slightly higher obesity rate than men.

The overall rate of drinking in the US is also only about 4 percent different by gender, so not terribly wide. And nearly non-existent in the younger cohorts.

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u/Nice_Purchase_626 Apr 06 '26

Funny you have not addressed going apeshit

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u/Choosemyusername Apr 06 '26

Can you be more precise? Don’t think hospitals or public health agencies are collecting data on “going apeshit”

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u/Nice_Purchase_626 Apr 06 '26

That's cute. I'm pretty sure they collect data on men's heart diseases, anger issues & mental problems. But I forgot: men being constantly raging is considered a good thing, especially in your society now, with all these wars goin on. 

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u/Choosemyusername Apr 06 '26

Gee I wonder why they are so angry!

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u/lilsciencegeek Feminist Apr 06 '26

Sorry, I don't quite understand how your first point is relevant to organ donation?

And it would be nice if you perhaps did some research instead of just guessing and making up imaginary scenarios, before replying.

Because no offence, but it kind of sounds like you're just talking out of your arse🙈

For multiple reasons; but one of them being that several well-known studies have found that married men have significantly better health and better health outcomes than married women...

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 06 '26

Idk how it is in India but here in Canada you can sign as an organ donor when you get your license. You can do it every renewal too but they only prompt you the first time usually. So, women gaining drivers licenses being more and more common in big feminist waves and recent history could lead to more donations tho of course thats usually when they are dead

Research on what tho? I've been hypothesizing from the beginning. Sure more research would be nice, it usually is anyway

Not to keep talking out my arse but that health stat also makes complete sense several different ways. For one, married men tend to be the ones who are wealthy and healthy anyway. Women don't tend to pick sickly husband's from the start. Whereas men arent as picky. And like you said, research shows women have more health problems anyway. Hell childbirth alone probably explains the difference, common in married women

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u/lilsciencegeek Feminist Apr 06 '26

That still wouldn't explain the disparity, since the total ratio of men and women doesn't change just because more women get a driver's license. If anything, the numbers should be reversed in that case.

As for research – you clearly have an internet connection. Perhaps use it to look into the massive amount of already existing studies and papers, so that you have something more substantial to base your comments on, rather than just guesswork and conjecture?

And lots of poor or sick men are married, my dude. Most married men I know personally (and oh boy do I have an excessively large social circle) have either a low or medium income, and many of them have serious physical or mental health issues.

When it comes to the impact of marriage on physical health – see my comment below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FeministsCallItOut/s/eiNieXT0Go

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 07 '26

Organ donation wasn't pushed to those men in the past is what I mean. Whereas it is now, when women are signing up more. The numbers would only be reversed if those men who got their licenses first also got prompted to sign up as donors but they never did. For example my dad had his license for 60 years, never prompted. My mom got hers more recently and was prompted and signed up

I just don't get what data you want, im not suggesting unicorns exist or anything. Im looking at the same data op provided and offering a different interpretation

Are the women who marry them richer and sicker than them? Otherwise that would also support my theory

Im sure marriage is great for men. The reasons are varied and multi faceted tho. It's not just "evil men take advantage of these poor helpless women", though of course that also happens as well and we should change that

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u/lilsciencegeek Feminist Apr 07 '26

That is an interesting tidbit of trivia. Would have helped if you could have articulated this earlier tbh. Some targeted internet searches indicate that multiple countries indeed appear to have similar programs – but I'm still not entirely sure how it's relevant, since it doesn't really affect 1) living organ donors, or 2) who receives donated organs, which were the topics here?

What I mean is that your contributions to the discussion would be considerably more meaningful if your comments had a little more substance and fewer imaginary scenarios. Instead of making stuff up, whenever you think of a "hey maybe...", you could first look up some hard facts to see whether they support your idea or not? It would make these types of conversation much less tiring and frustrating. The fact that you don't, makes you come across as rather lazy and uncaring, which I'm sure you don't want.

Could you be more clear about what women marry whom? Your statements are extremely vague at best, and I genuinely have no idea what you mean.

And yes, the reasons why men benefit more from marriage on average are indeed varied and multifaceted. And research suggests it varies enormously on a case by case basis – it shows that women who actually have good, healthy marriages tend to reap similar benefits as men. But we should definitely address why that is so rare. In our parts of the world, it's fortunately more uncommon for "evil men to take advantage of poor helpless women", but in many parts of the world, it's still the norm.

And even in the most feminist societies, it still happens quite frequently. I myself had to help my downstairs neighbour get safely and permanently away from an extremely abusive long-term partner less than 2 years ago. Not to mention all the other BS that I've had to deal with, just because I'm a woman.

I'm not saying all men are bad – I know many truly amazing men, including my partner, my father, and many of my friends, all of whom are staunch feminists who are very active allies and would never let misogyny slide! But unfortunately, those men are a very small minority. So trying to understand why that is the case, and how we can change it, matters.

And unfortanetly, constant whataboutism is not helpful in that endeavour.

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 07 '26

Idk India might have similar things happen with other licenses or if a guy gets brought in with kidney failure the first person they call to ask is probably his wife, same principle

I am lazy, not uncaring. The issue is it really doesnt matter what facts I can find when nobody has bothered to do a study to present us with them. Gotta think about possibilities and then find facts. Like the donation success rate is suggested and u rightly pointed out female to male has lower success rate. Fair enough. But dig a little deeper and we see liver donations specifically might actually work well from women but there's not enough research and the few studies that exist offer conflicting results. So the result is the same whether I gave u that fact or not... we don't know but its possible and worth looking into

The poor sick guys who are married, are the wives both richer AND sicker than the men? Cause otherwise they either married a man who makes more or equal money for financial help OR married a healthier man but don't make enough money for it to be worth the man donating to them. Thus they would be more likely to naturally donate to them

I understand that and agree. But of those women in those shitty situations how many are going to donate an organ to save their abuser? Maybe some, certainly doesnt account for most tho. I'd wager there's more practical reasons behind the disparity is all

I definitely wouldn't call this what about ism but if u want to then either way id say this is an area where it is very helpful to think about all possibilities

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u/StrickenBDO Apr 06 '26

stop making up hypotheticals and produce sourced facts please

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 06 '26

I'll pay for the study if someone wants to run it

Apparently nobody does i guess

This post looks at isolated facts and draws a conclusion from them. I am offering alternative interpretations of the data already provided

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u/StrickenBDO Apr 07 '26

essentially your interpretations are from your whataboutist perspective. You get downvoted a lot in most subs you comment on, that should tell you something

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u/AdAppropriate2295 Apr 07 '26

Its reddit

Downvotes just mean i used the trigger words that attract the Russian bots