Why more women get cancer but more men die
Women in India are more likely to get cancer. Men are more likely to die from it.
The paradox, revealed in a study of the country’s latest cancer registry, tells a story at once simple and confounding.
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Women account for just over half of all new cases, but men make up the majority of deaths.
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India appears to be an outlier. In 2022, for every 100,000 people worldwide, on average, about 197 were diagnosed with cancer that year. Men fared worse, at 212, compared to 186 for women, according to the World Cancer Research Fund.
Nearly 20 million cancer cases were diagnosed globally in 2022 – about 10.3 million in men and 9.7 million in women. In the US, the estimated lifetime risk of cancer is nearly equal for men and women, according to the American Cancer Society.
Most common cancers among women
In India, the most common cancers among women are breast, cervical, and ovarian. Breast and cervical cancers make up 40% of female cases.
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While cervical cancer is largely linked to infections such as human papillomavirus (HPV), breast and ovarian cancers are often influenced by hormonal factors. Rising cases of these hormone-related cancers are also associated with lifestyle shifts – including later pregnancies, reduced breastfeeding, obesity, and sedentary habits.
For men, oral, lung, and prostate cancers dominate. Tobacco drives 40 per cent of preventable cancers, mainly oral and lung.
So what is going on in India? Is it an earlier diagnosis for women? Are men’s cancers more aggressive, or is it that habits such as smoking and chewing tobacco drag down their outcomes? Or does the answer lie in differences in access, awareness and treatment between genders?
Awareness campaigns and improved facilities mean cancers common among women are often detected earlier.
With their long latency periods – time between exposure to a cancer-causing factor and the appearance of detectable cancer – treatment outcomes are relatively good.
Mortality rates among women are therefore lower.
Men fare worse. Their cancers are more often tied to lifestyle – tobacco and alcohol drive lung and oral cancers, both aggressive and less responsive to treatment.
Men are also less likely to go for preventive check-ups or seek medical help early. The result: higher mortality and poorer outcomes, even when incidence is lower than among women.
“Women’s health has become a bigger focus in public health campaigns, and that’s a double-edged sword. Greater awareness and screening mean more cancers are detected early. For men, the conversation rarely goes beyond tobacco and oral cancer,” Ravi Mehrotra, a cancer specialist and head of the non-profit Centre for Health Innovation and Policy (CHIP) Foundation, told me.
