Age-based healthcare prioritisation and gender discrimination

All over the world, women live longer lives than men. Accordingly, women make up the majority of the oldest age cohorts. This means that if health services for young people are prioritised over health services for older people, women will be deprioritised to a greater extent than men. In this article, I discuss whether disfavouring older people in the distribution of healthcare resources indirectly discriminates against women. Indirect discrimination requires disproportionate disadvantage. I argue that age-based prioritisation disadvantages women relative to men. However, this argument is based on certain assumptions about the actual effects of the policy. Subsequently, I discuss whether the disadvantages for living women are disproportionate by focusing on the strength of women's moral claim to health resources (assuming that the moral claim is stronger the worse off they are). On the one hand, women are only disadvantaged by age-based prioritisation because they already have an advantage in terms of life expectancy. On the other hand, partly because of their longevity, older women are in many respects a vulnerable group, which supports the view that it is disproportionate to burden them further. I conclude that age-based prioritisation risks discriminating against women in ways that should be avoided. The benefits of age-based prioritisation should not only justify disadvantageous treatment of older people relative to younger people; they should also justify disparate effects on women and men. In addition to shedding new light on age-based prioritisation, the article illustrates the nuance required for determining whether a policy indirectly discriminates.