Differences between Australian men and women over upper body sites where skin cancer develops appear to be disappearing, a review of histopathology records suggests.

Years of anecdotal evidence, plus a handful of studies through the 1980s and ‘90s, have shown that Australian men develop more skin cancers and solar keratoses on their right arm and the right-hand side of their face – with women finding more on their left.

This distribution of cancers has been attributed to driving-related ultraviolet exposure, based on the idea that men were driving with the windows down in summer, while women sat in the passenger seat.

That sexist-seeming assumption has been backed up by a 2004 analysis of skin cancer patient records from the US, where people drive on the right, that found a predominance of melanoma and non-melanoma cancers on the exposed left side of the body.