On the 5th of August this year, I sent our Secretary of State for Health and Social Care an email regarding the abominable treatment of women within the medical sphere. I highlighted the devastating effects that this sickening injustice has, not only on its victims but their friends and family. My plea to the man deemed responsible for the oversight of NHS delivery and performance was ignored. This left me pondering how female health is supposedly unrelated to NHS performance, considering sickness absence rates are higher in women than men and have been consistently for nearly three decades (Office for National Statistics). Having been dismissed by the dreaded automated email, which punctures the hopes of any individual desiring to speak to a sentient being, I turned to my local MP. He, however, was decorating his office. I hope the fairy lights and posters look grand. When I followed up my email, questioning his lack of response, I was told he would “prioritise the most urgent enquiries first.” As this was over a month ago, I can confidently announce that significantly more women dying than men due to a disparity in the quality of treatment is not his understanding of “urgent.” My sentiment to Wes Streeting and my local MP, that “it is distressing and hurtful to know that our country does not consider us important enough to be treated as equals to men when receiving diagnosis and treatment” has thus been reaffirmed.
My email began with discussing the androcentric nature of medicine in the UK, being based on, and made for men. As a result, marginalizing the symptoms that women experience is to be expected. An example of this is that doctors are more likely to regard female symptoms of heart disease as “atypical” compared with the symptoms that often affect men. They are also less likely to refer women for diagnostic tests and treatment. The same is true for heart attacks. Women are less likely to receive “classic” heart attack symptoms (John Hopkins Medicine: “Heart Disease: Differences in Men and Women”). This calls into question the definition of “classic,” however. Is it not synonymous with “typical”? Is it not synonymous with “representative”? With “textbook”? I would argue these heart attack symptoms are “typical” and “representative” of men alone. This proves that the female experience is excluded in the medical sphere. It is true, however, that they are “textbook,” considering medical textbooks teach doctors androcentric research tested primarily on men (or male rats, if women are so lucky to have their health issues investigated). This is supposedly due to female hormonal fluctuations resulting in their exclusion from medical trials. Strange then, that we can acknowledge how women have different internal states to men, yet still attempt to apply the same medical rules and treatments. Women make up over 50% of our population. I asked that we finally acknowledge women have the right to health care too. I asked that more studies are done on and for women. It is a shame that anyone must ask this at all.
I then noted that a 2018 review of 77 articles shows that medical professionals are more likely to dismiss women patients as too sensitive, hysterical, or as timewasters (“Brave Men” and “Emotional Women”: A Theory-Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms towards Patients with Chronic Pain). This happens even though women experience more chronic pain than men, overall. Doctors are also more likely to diagnose women with a psychological cause for their pain (Medical News Today: “Gender bias in medical diagnosis”), insinuating the problem is psychosomatic rather than a physical one, compared with men. Denying women of their experiences is not only disgusting in the 21st century but undeniably results in an increase of mental health problems, increasing the strain on the NHS. Unsurprisingly, other studies found that women receive less pain medication and less effective pain medication than men (King’s College London: “Study finds women less likely to be prescribed pain relief than men”). This finding is expected considering that, to this day, there remains a remanence of the moral obligation to reject pain medication during labour, as to ensure a “natural birth.” How strange that no man will take into consideration nature or his “morals” when receiving pain medication for a broken leg, yet a woman must consider this when pushing a human from her vagina (female body parts need not be censored or considered offensive in the present day. It is psychologically fascinating that words used to describe the female form are still deemed grotesque. The suggestion is that women are dirty, which makes sense considering our treatment in the gynaecological sphere. Disgust at female autonomy perpetuates medical misogyny; people do not want to examine or treat what they fear).
I then explained how doctors used to believe that bleeding disorders affected men only, revealing why women are diagnosed significantly later and thus receive lower chances of survival. However, this delayed diagnosis happens despite the fact that women are more likely to notice the symptoms of bleeding disorders, as many complain of heavy periods. I attempted to explain that, in general, if a woman mentions heavy periods she will be put on the pill or told that it is “natural female pain.” All other possibilities are abandoned. This problem is immense, and delays correct diagnosis and thus treatment. For example, women with moderate haemophilia receive diagnosis 6.5 months later than men, on average, and women with severe haemophilia face delays of 39 months. For women with Von Willebrand’s disease, the delay between symptom onset and diagnosis is 16 years (National Library of Medicine: “Sexism in the management of bleeding disorders”).
Finally, I moved on to the problematically random prescription of the pill, regardless of the patient’s symptoms, which reveals quite how uneducated doctors are on female healthcare. Either the only solution any doctor is aware of is putting the patient on synthetic hormones, or the doctor hopes to silence the patient by giving them a prescription. On top of being denied their experiences, having their symptoms ignored and told they are overreacting and should expect to feel pain, women are then prescribed medicine with devastating side effects. Whilst contraception is incredibly important and should always be available to women as a matter of course, it is worth noting that male contraception is not available at all. It is possible for a man to impregnate nine women a day, every day, for 9 months, resulting in 2,430 pregnancies, whilst a women can only get pregnant once in those 9 months. Is the lack of male contraception because of the side effects it comes with? Why then, considering these figures, are women the ones expected to endure them? I told my MP how much I look forward to the day when birth control does not increase the risk of cervical cancer, depression (which is listed under “less serious side effects” on the Microgynon packet leaflets), anxiety and weight gain. In other words, I told him that I look forward to when female healthcare is taken seriously. How ironic that this wish lays rotting in his inbox.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5845507/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/gender-bias-in-medical-diagnosis
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-finds-women-less-likely-to-be-prescribed-pain-relief-than-men