Dismissed by Design: How the System Ignores Women’s Pain
Part Two of a three-part series on how the system fails women’s health
Pain is supposed to be a warning – a signal that something needs to be addressed. But for the doctor who saw me in Spain, where I lived for eight years, it was a sign of something else: childlessness.
“You haven’t given birth,” he said, “so your period pains are going to be bad.”
He gave a little shrug and I was sent on my way, a gaslight flickering over my unreproductive life.
Agonising periods had always been part of my life. Sometimes they were so severe that even the mefenemic acid I’d been prescribed couldn’t take the edge of them. Sympathy, however, was scarce and not only from the professionals. Friends, who could take two paracetamol and get on with life, couldn’t understand why I was doubled over. Period pain wasn’t that bad; I was just putting it on.
As I argued in Part One, this is why silence is so damaging: it dismisses our experiences. Whether it’s the sharp grip of endometriosis, the relentless drag of fibroids, or the bone-aching pull of perimenopause, it’s all “part of being a woman” and so, something to be endured.
Look back and you’ll find a long history of women’s pain being rebranded as emotional weakness. In Ancient Greece, Hippocrates blamed just about any mental or physical condition a woman could suffer on on our wombs “wandering” around our bodies and causing amok. (“Hysteria” comes from the Greek work for the womb, hystera.) In the 19th century, women were routinely institutionalised for “nerves” or “melancholia”, their pain only medicalised if it fit male-determined criteria.
That legacy lingers today – doctors are still more likely to downplay women’s pain or attribute it to emotion. Indeed, over 50% of women report their symptoms being dismissed by the GP, compared to 36% of men.
Despite advances in treatment and the dedication of many healthcare providers, the system they work within is still built on outdated defaults. Medical training, research and diagnostics have long centred male bodies, symptoms and experiences. Women remain clinical outliers: misdiagnosed, misunderstood and, too often, simply missed.
Fatigue, pain, brain fog, heavy bleeding, nausea are brushed off as stress, anxiety, or depression. Sometimes they are, but not always. Up to 50% of women diagnosed with depression actually have hidden physical issues. This isn’t malice; it’s diagnostic shorthand within a system that lacks the training and funding to dig further.
Even in A&E, women wait an average 16 minutes longer than men to receive pain relief. The assumption is baked in: men hurt, women exaggerate.
The consequences aren’t just frustrating; they’re expensive. Delayed diagnosis leads to worsening symptoms, emotional distress and financial loss from missed work, repeated appointments and out-of-pocket costs for alternative therapies or private consultations.
It’s not just women’s pockets being hit. Severe period pain costs the UK economy £3.7bn annually in lost working days. Add in heavy periods and the figure jumps to £8.4bn. Women leaving work due to menopause symptoms is another £1.5bn annual loss.
While the economic cost is staggering, the human cost is worse: years lost to pain that could have been treated. I was offered promotions and turned them down, even though the positions were less senior than ones I’d held previously. The reason? Undiagnosed menopause, which left me so anxious the thought of taking on more responsibility left me feeling physically ill. For four years, until I received a diagnosis, I didn’t live, I merely existed.
Change is coming, however, albeit slowly. Some institutions are beginning to address the problem and there’s growing awareness around how gender bias affects diagnosis. Newer generations of clinicians are being trained to recognise how cultural expectations shape health outcomes. In addition, thanks to the work done by groups including Pausitivity, Henpicked and Menopause Café, employers are realising they have to adapt.
But systemic change takes time and while we wait, women are still being failed.
We’re not overreacting. We’re not exaggerating. We’re not imagining it. We are being dismissed – by design.
And that’s costing us all.
This is the second in a three-part series on how the system continues to fail women’s health. Click here for Part One – It Starts with Silence: What Women Are Not Being Told.
Next week: No More Excuses: Support Her Health
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Further Reading:
UCL: Women’s pain is routinely underestimated A look at how gender stereotypes influence clinical decisions and delay treatment for women across a range of health issues.
PubMed: Problems in accurate medical diagnosis of depression in female patients Explores how symptoms in women are often misread as depression, leading to incorrect or delayed diagnoses for physical conditions.
Nature: Women’s health research lacks funding A data-driven deep dive into the persistent underfunding of health conditions that disproportionately affect women.
Global Genes: Delayed Diagnosis of Rare Diseases Takes Economic Toll Reveals the real-world cost of waiting years for a diagnosis, including financial, emotional and healthcare system burdens.
NPR: Funding cuts to landmark women’s health study Shows how even long-running women’s health research can face sudden loss of support, further stalling progress.