Women & Pain
Unfortunately, women are taken less seriously more often than men when it comes to pain - Dr. Jennifer Wider
image by: Sydney Latham on Unsplash
HWN Suggests
Medicine’s Failure With Women in Pain
I became an unwell woman 10 years ago. In October 2010, the cause of the strange pains that had hounded me for years was finally uncovered, and I received a diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), a chronic autoimmune disease that is the most common form of lupus. Ninety percent of the estimated 3.5 million people who have it are women. Like many other autoimmune and chronic diseases that disproportionately affect women—including multiple sclerosis, Graves’ disease, myasthenia gravis, rheumatoid arthritis and endometriosis—SLE is incurable, and its cause is not fully understood.
In the years since my diagnosis, as I learned to live with my mysterious, unpredictable disease,…
Featured
Modern medicine still has much to learn about women’s bodies
Alongside her feminist history of illness, Elinor Cleghorn makes a plea for better listening
My Doctor Told Me My Pain Was All in My Head. It Ended Up Saving Me
After a decade of mysterious running injuries and countless specialist visits, I found a treatment centered on neuroscience.
The Doctor Doesn’t Listen to Her. But the Media Is Starting To
Physicians have long dismissed or downplayed women's sexual- and reproductive-health concerns—but in 2018, stories about "health-care gaslighting" are consistently breaking through to the mainstream.
When Doctors Don’t Believe Women’s Pain
Medical gaslighting makes women sick. The problem is more complex than a few bad doctors.
Why are doctors more likely to ignore women's pain?
From understanding how they talk about pain to understanding the barriers that society places on them, it's time to take a hard look at why our health care system is failing women.
Women suffer needless pain because almost everything is designed for men
Why women are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack and 17 percent more likely to die in a car crash.
Women’s pain is routinely underestimated, and gender stereotypes are to blame – new research
When a man consults a doctor about pain, he will hope to be taken seriously: to convince the doctor that the pain is real, and a problem that needs addressing. The experience is different for women, who may suspect that gender stereotypes could lead their doctor to conclude they’re not in as much pain as they say they are. Unfortunately, this suspicion is valid.
Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women
The science of medicine is based on male bodies, but researchers are beginning to realize how vastly the symptoms of disease differ between the sexes — and how much danger women are in.
‘Every time it’s a battle’: In excruciating pain, sickle cell patients are shunted aside
Amy Mason had toughed it out for hours one day this past July, trying warm soaks and heating pads and deep breathing to soothe pain that felt like her bones were being sawed with a rusty blade. She knew this was a life-threatening emergency of sickle cell disease, in which her misshapen red blood cells were getting stuck in her blood vessels like tree limbs in a storm sewer. But she delayed going to the emergency room; previous visits hadn’t gone well.
Articles of Interest
The Yentl syndrome is alive and well
As characterized by the ‘Yentl syndrome’ depicted in the Barbra Streisand movie of the same name, Dr Bernadine Healy used this term in 2001 to call attention to the paradox of adverse outcomes of women with IHD, as well as the underdiagnosis and undertreatment of women.
‘I was told to live with it’: women tell of doctors dismissing their pain
The women who reached out said they felt that they were often “fobbed off” with painkillers when their problems required medical investigation.
Gaslighting in women’s health: No, it’s not just in your head
There’s a dirty little secret in health care that doesn’t get the attention it deserves: Female patients are continuously gaslighted about their physical and mental health.
Genders experience pain differently, and women have it more
More women than men suffer from chronic pain, described as pain that persists for more than six months. In addition, much of this pain remains undiagnosed or untreated. As well as the pain associated with menstruation or the bearing of children, waiting rooms of pain physicians, rheumatologists and gastroenterologists show clear majorities of women.
How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously
When my wife was struck by mysterious, debilitating symptoms, our trip to the ER revealed the sexism inherent in emergency treatment.
How Men and Women Feel Pain Differently
Understanding how men and women feel feel pain is clouded by conflicting results and murky interpretations. While some work suggests that women feel more pain than men, other studies have found the opposite to be true. So which gender has the higher threshold? That depends on what’s hurting and how.
Serena Williams on Motherhood, Marriage, and Making Her Comeback
She walked out of the hospital room so her mother wouldn’t worry and told the nearest nurse, between gasps, that she needed a CT scan with contrast and IV heparin (a blood thinner) right away.
Stories of Misunderstanding Women's Pain
The series was sparked by Joe Fassler’s account of his wife experiencing an ovarian torsion that went undiagnosed for an excruciatingly long time.
The Gender Gap in Pain
Pain conditions are a particularly good example of the interplay between sex (our biological and chromosomal differences) and gender (the cultural roles and expectations attributed to a person).
What Serena Williams’s scary childbirth story says about medical treatment of black women
Black women are often dismissed or ignored by medical care providers. Williams wasn’t an exception.
Your Pain Is Not Real: How Doctors Discriminate Against Women
Because of sexist myths about health and pain, women have more difficulty getting proper diagnoses and treatment for serious conditions.
