Challenges for Women

“I think that women's pain is definitely dismissed and treated differently than men's pain.

And that has to do with historical and cultural expectations around women as patients,

that we are hysterical, that we are unreliable narrators of our own symptoms.”

- Susan Burton - Interview PBS News Hour - Aug 29, 2023

The Retrievals podcast series reveals painful experiences of female patients are often ignored. This story took place at the fertility clinic

at Yale University in 2020.

Link to free Podcast The Retrievals all Episodes: Host, writer, reporter, and co-producer Susan Burton

https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/kbjcs-2be24e/The-Retrievals-Podcast

Link to PBS video - Highlights on PBS Aug 29, 2023:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/podcast-the-retrievals-reveals-painful-experiences-of-female-patients-are-often-ignored

The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism

in Healthcare Kill Women

Book by Anushay Hossain - is a journalist and political analyst whose writings on politics, gender, and race are published on Forbes,CNN.com, The Daily Beast, and Medium.

Published by Simon and Schuster - October 26, 2021

“There’s a pain gap, but there’s also a credibility gap.

Women are not believed about their bodies — period.”

From heart disease to IUDs:
How doctors dismiss women’s pain

"Several studies support the claim that gender bias in medicine routinely leads to a

denial of pain relief for female patients for a range of health conditions"

The Washington Post - By Lindsey Bever - Dec 13, 2022

"It took decades to solve the mystery of Maureen Woods’s chronic pain. Woods, 64, of Myersville, Md., started

having joint pain in her teens and, over the years, told dozens of doctors her pain was “debilitating,” she said.

Some told her it was all in her head. In 2017, she was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome,

a connective tissue disorder often causing loose joints, dislocations and chronic pain."

Taking the ‘Shame Part’ Out of Female Anatomy

Anatomists have bid farewell to “pudendum,” but other

questionable terms remain.

The New York Times - By Rachel E. Gross - Published Sept. 21, 2021, Updated June 23, 2023

“This isn’t just people arguing about semantics,” she said. “This is important because women, especially women

of color and especially gender-nonconforming women, are not getting the same health care or access to health care

that they deserve.”

Leilani, 30, never had trouble talking about her sexual anatomy. Then, in November 2018, she started feeling a

persistent pain between her legs. “When I say burning vulva, I mean on fire,” she said. Sex was excruciating;

doctors suggested she try a glass of wine.

“It feels like the shame nerve,” she said. “I had so much shame that I was like, Oh, my god, because I’ve been such

an open, sex-positive person, is this my punishment?”

More than a year later, she was diagnosed with pudendal neuralgia, a chronic pain condition in which the

pudendal nerve becomes injured, irritated or compressed." 1

From heart disease to IUDs:
How doctors dismiss women’s pain

Several studies support the claim that gender bias in medicine routinely leads to a

denial of pain relief for female patients for a range of health conditions

The Washington Post - By Lindsey Bever - Dec 13, 2022

"It took decades to solve the mystery of Maureen Woods’s chronic pain. Woods, 64, of Myersville, MD., started

having joint pain in her teens and, over the years, told dozens of doctors her pain was “debilitating,” she said.

Some told her it was all in her head. In 2017, she was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome,

a connective tissue disorder often causing loose joints, dislocations and chronic pain." 2

Women and pain:

Disparities in experience and treatment

Harvard health Publishing - Harvard Medical School - October 9, 2017

"To return to the issue of chronic pain, 70% of the people it impacts are women. And yet, 80% of

pain studies are conducted on . . . human men." 3

"Sex differences in patient journeys to diagnosis,

referral, and surgical treatment of trigeminal neuralgia:

implications for equitable care"

"Conclusions: Critical sex differences in patients' journeys to [trigemina neuralgia] TN surgical treatment were identified, with females enduring considerably longer referral timelines and expressing significantly greater pain intensity than males at referral. Taken together, our findings suggest the presence of unconscious bias and discrimination against females and highlight the need for expediting TN treatment referral for female TN patients.." 4

Just as with pudendal neuralgia, TN occurs roughly 70% in women, 30% in men and women with TN suffer the same gender-bias as women with PN. Medical doctors and administrators need to acknowledge and end this systemic prejudice against women within the pain management specialty.

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/science/pudendum-women-anatomy.html