The aim of the study is to meet the request of the Medical Faculty of Barbados in collaboration with Women and Development Studies to sensitize towards gender in the practice of medicine. It follows that this search for clarity in gender relations in medicine, as a response to this initiative, did not have the benefit of a long gestation period. Therefore certain aspects of prematurity are likely to be engrained either in the methodology or in the results of this observational study. The work is offered as an attempt at objectivity in our considerations about gender and health; and as an invitation to collaboration should anyone be interested in a more refined product affecting social policy