Women's oral health across the lifespan.

To address women's oral health conditions, it is important that oral health care providers understand basic female physiology and reproductive biology and consider the complex interaction between the environment, biology, and psychosocial development of women. Most oral health issues are not gender-specific but rather are aspects of conditions that may affect women differently. Oral health care providers should recognize that using this information to provide competent care requires knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that are culturally and gender-sensitive. Recognizing the potential for gender-based differences in oral health and disease processes is a first step to becoming gender-competent.