In a sobering indictment of the medical misogyny that pervades our lives, a new report led by the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) has highlighted how a “pervasive stigma” around women’s reproductive health has left women waiting years for diagnosis and treatment for a range of conditions.
“Diagnosis is slow not only because reproductive health conditions often have non-specific symptoms, but because of a lack of expertise and resource,” reads the report. “Women are being told symptoms such as heavy, painful bleeding and incontinence are ‘normal’, that they are either too young to have a condition, or too old to expect treatment.”
The report went on to explore how the worrying trend stemmed from a “clear lack of awareness and understanding of women’s reproductive health conditions among primary healthcare practitioners.”
This report will certainly not come as a shock to most women in the UK. Almost all of us have either experienced these systemic shortcomings firsthand or met someone else who has. Just last month, Florence Pugh revealed how UK healthcare professionals had refused to accept an American OB-GYN’s PCOS diagnosis — countless other women have similar stories.
And the problem of the healthcare system ignoring women doesn’t stop at reproductive health. The new report from WEC comes after the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) found that a fifth of women report being called ‘dramatic’ when they have sought help for their mental health.
The study – which spoke to 2,000 women about their experiences talking about mental health crises – also found that over a quarter (27%) of respondents had their concerns undermined by being told their issues could be hormonal: 20% were asked at the time if they were on their period.
33% reported being asked if they were “overthinking things”, while 19% of those aged 18-34 admit that they have felt ignored or invisible when speaking up about mental health crisis. Heartbreakingly, 22% feared being viewed as “attention seeking”.
This is unacceptable, and serves as a huge explanation as to why medical misogyny remains so powerful in modern society, if women don’t believe they can be taken seriously when talking about panic attacks and manic depression. It not only clouds the judgment of those who might be able to help, it can also delay sufferers from getting the treatment they need if they don’t feel that they deserve it.
According to CALM’s CEO Simon Gunning, the study shows that “damaging preconceptions are leaving young women unheard and unsupported and lives are at risk like never before.”
A 2022 study published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia also found that women are less likely to receive potentially lifesaving medication, increasing their risk of death. The study looked at data from 216,000 trauma patients in England and Wales to assess whether equal treatment was given, and found that women were half as likely to be given tranexamic acid (TXA), which reduces the risk of death from excessive bleeding by up to 30 per cent.