Women and Pain

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.

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.

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.

Pain bias: The health inequality rarely discussed

When they’re in pain, women wait longer in emergency departments and are less likely to be given effective painkillers than men.

Medicine’s Failure With Women in Pain

Women have faced centuries of doubt and discrimination over their ailments, from ancient Greece to modern diagnoses of ‘hysteria’.

When Women's Pain Isn't Taken Seriously

In the UK, hysteroscopies—a procedure by which doctors examine the inside of the uterus—are routinely performed without any form of pain relief. But for some women, the experience can be unbearably painful.