Headaches and migraines are both examples of chronic pain. They also affect women ... [+]
Googling “Women’s pain ignored by doctors” brings up over 3.6 million results, many of which have similar headlines: “Women’s pain often is dismissed by doctors,” “Women and pain: Disparities in experience and treatment,” “Gaslighting in women’s health: No, it’s not just in your head,” “The Pain Gap: Why Women’s Pain is Undertreated,” “Why are doctors more likely to ignore women’s pain?” and so on.
What is chronic pain?
Anywhere from 11% to 40% of U.S adults suffer from chronic pain, also known as persistent pain: pain that lasts over three months despite medication and/or treatment. Chronic pain conditions can include autoimmune diseases, back pain, diabetes, headaches and migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, joint pain, and period-related pain.
Although 80% of pain studies involve male mice or humans, 70% of chronic pain sufferers are, in fact, female. Some examples of chronic pain conditions that affect women disproportionately or exclusively include:
Autoimmune Diseases: Women are about 80% of those diagnosed with autoimmune diseases (which include Crohn’s Disease, lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, and Sjögren’s Syndrome).
Fibromyalgia: 80-90% of diagnosed cases are in women.
Migraines: Migraines are three times more common in women than in men.
Period-related pain: Nine out of every ten women experience period-related pain. Relatedly, endometriosis (which affects one out of every 10 women) and polycystic ovarian syndrome (which affects one in every five to 25 women) also cause chronic pain.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA): Rheumatoid arthritis is two to three times more common in women than in men
Why women aren’t believed
Emerging evidence has shown how compassion from clinicians in responding to patients’ pain may improve treatment outcomes. But, as the headlines from a Google
This gender bias in medicine dates back to Ancient Greece and has persisted through the years. In 1956, for instance, during the first large-scale trial of the birth control pill, women noted side effects like blood clots, headaches, and nausea, but they were considered “unreliable historians”, and their concerns were dismissed. Recently, a 2021 study found that observers perceived female patients to be in less pain than male ones, though both groups were reporting and exhibiting the same pain intensity.
Women who show and express their pain may also experience social stigma along with their physical pain: women in chronic pain are more likely to be considered “emotional” and “hysterical” and accused of making up their pain than men in chronic pain, who tend to be regarded as “stoic”.
This dismissal and gender stereotyping does not go unnoticed. 57% of female respondents in a recent survey said that they have been “dismissed or misdiagnosed by medical professionals”, and 59% said, “I have sought treatment from doctors who do not believe me, or who have ignored my needs” (for all issues and needs, including chronic pain). In a survey of women with endometriosis, 90% were told - by friends, family, employers, and healthcare professors - that their pain was just a “normal part of being a woman”. Endometriosis currently takes an average of seven years to diagnose correctly.
That experience only worsens for women of color, who face both racial and gender biases. 33% of surveyed Black women in one study reported experiencing racial discrimination by a doctor or at a health clinic, and 21% said the concern of facing racial discrimination has caused them to avoid going to a doctor or seeking healthcare.
John Oliver, Larry David, and Wanda Sykes even joked about this reality in 2019. Sykes urged patients to advocate for themselves but also suggested, if that tactic failed, to “bring a white man to repeat everything that you’re saying.”
How women aren’t treated
The result of not being believed as a woman, especially a Black woman, is not being treated. Middle-aged women with chest pain and other symptoms of heart disease are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness than men with the same symptoms. Women with chest pain who visit emergency departments also wait 29% longer to be evaluated for a possible heart attack than men were. When they are seen, they’re also 50% more likely than men are to have their heart attack misdiagnosed.
Women with acute abdominal pain, meanwhile, wait an average of 65 minutes in U.S emergency rooms before receiving a painkiller while their male counterparts wait only 49 minutes. Women are also up 25% less likely to be treated with powerful opioid painkillers than men with the same pain.
In fact, women in pain are generally more likely than men in pain to receive prescriptions for sedatives, rather than pain medications as seen in women who receive coronary bypass surgery. They’re about half as likely to be prescribed painkillers compared to men who had undergone that same surgery. A 2019 study with a relatively equal male and female population found that Black patients were 40% less likely to receive medication for acute pain and 34% less likely to be prescribed opioids than white patients.
Chronic pelvic pain affects approximately one in seven women - and its direct and indirect costs ... [+]
How women’s pain affects everyone
Not treating or incorrectly treating women’s pain could lead to increased health risks. Individuals with chronic pain are more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke than those who are pain-free. Chronic pain, its associated diseases, or even its treatments may also have potential adverse effects on bone density, thus increasing an individual’s risk of osteoporosis, which is already four times more common in women than men. These additional health risks increase not only the emotional costs to patients’ family and friends but also the financial costs to anyone or any insurance provider paying for their care.
In contrast, attention to and investment in women’s pain could benefit both individual women and the economy at large. A 2021 article, for example, calculated that studies focused on rheumatoid arthritis in women received funding of just $6 million USD a year. Doubling that amount would deliver a 174,000% ROI and add $10.5 billion USD to the economy over 30 years.
Googling “women in pain” should not bring up only variations of the same stories of women being dismissed, ignored, or untreated. Implementing solutions for women in pain, from proportional representation in clinical studies to awareness and empathy from healthcare providers, can all help improve women’s health outcomes - and make being a woman more than just a (chronic) pain.
