As a woman, it has never been a rarity for me to have others dismiss my health concerns as a natural part of being a female and it’s clear I’m not the only one. This is a sentiment I constantly hear echoed in the stories of numerous others. Despite the incredible advancements in scientific development —such as landing on the moon, exploring the depths of the Challenger Deep and discovering a new phenomenon in a massive black hole—research on female health remains exceedingly vacuous and overlooked. In fact, research reveals the staggering discrepancies in how doctors take men’s pain more seriously than women’s pain, just one of the numerous injustices and misogyny women face in the medical field.
Throughout history, medical research has constantly excluded female subjects and research data conducted with male participants have been collected and generalized to women. Despite women accounting for half of the world’s population, research has consistently referred to men’s bodies as the “norm” and women’s as “atypical” when conducting clinical trials. Many medical researchers even believe that using female mice obstructs their research due to increased costs accompanied by buying and housing both sexes. Additionally, they are concerned that the fluctuating hormones and reproductive systems of female mice might decelerate their study results.
These sexist inequalities in medical research, alongside overarching societal misogyny, entail dangerous implications for women, especially when undertaking their role as patients. Due to the intentional neglect and generalization of research data from male to female, women’s symptoms often go undiagnosed and overlooked since they do not align with those identified in male bodies. Symptoms of having a heart attack may manifest differently in a female body compared to a male body. However, because heart attack research primarily focuses on male bodies, doctors may prioritize men’s symptoms and dismiss those of women.
These misogynistic studies and treatment also disproportionately affect women of color, where an article published by MRCT in 2022 revealed that medical researchers do not record the intersection of biological sex and race, indicating how some systematic reviews of clinical trials based upon such information show an overwhelming underrepresentation of women of color.
Additionally, menstruation is constantly seen as a stigma and a shunned issue, creating significant knowledge gaps and unawareness when it comes to understanding one of the most important aspects of the female body. I remember talking with a friend about how I and many people that I know suffer from vomiting and fainting due to dysmenorrhea whenever we have our period. When she asked me what dysmenorrhea was, I was stunned because I thought it was common knowledge. When I explained that it is a medical term for painful period cramps, accompanied by fatigue, vomiting, fainting and many more symptoms, she was surprised, saying that she did not know that such a term existed and that people experience such symptoms.
Moreover, with the demand for proper treatment and increased representation of women in medical research, numerous activists have also amplified their calls for contraceptive justice, arguing how problematic it is for women to bear most of the burden of financial, health-related and other contraception afflictions while men’s reproductive autonomy is undermined because women are expected to assume most of the responsibility for contraception. In comparison to men, there are a total of 11 methods of contraception women can choose from, including hormonal and long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs).
On the other hand, men currently only have male condoms and vasectomy, which do not entail hormonal methods or LARCs. This disparity becomes increasingly absurd knowing that women can only give birth once every nine months, while men can impregnate hundreds within that period. Yet, women are expected to assume most of the responsibilities in contraception, which bears a serious toll on their health and leaves them with long-term and even permanent effects.
Female health has been neglected in science for centuries. Despite women accounting for half the world’s population, female bodies are still considered unideal subjects for research because of society’s entrenched misogyny and continuous neglect. However, women’s health is just as important and urgent as men’s while continuously being at risk of legislation changes. Women hold up half the sky. For them to maintain that strength, we should treat their health as a priority, not a sheer triviality.
