As women, we deal with a lot of unfair gaps. There’s the pay gap, the education gap, and even the sleep gap. But Dr Sarah White, CEO of Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, has another gap for the top of your agenda: the pain gap.
Here she talks about the five ways that women’s pain is different, and shares the one thing she wants you to get fired up about this Women’s Health Week.
Dr White: When we’re talking about the pain gap in women’s health, we really need to bring two things into focus: sex and gender. Sex is the biological part – women have different hormones, different muscle masses, different bodies to men.
Gender, on the other hand, is the social construct. It sets up our behaviours and roles – for example, the stereotype that girls wear pink, boys wear blue. It also shapes the assumptions we make about a woman, simply based on the fact that they’re a woman.
So the pain gap is all about how sex and gender work together and create differences – often negative ones – in women’s health and their pain.
If you’re a woman, you have a higher chance of your pain being ignored or dismissed by your doctor than if you’re a man.”
Dr White: If you’re a woman, you have a higher chance of your pain being ignored or dismissed by your doctor than if you’re a man. This was revealed in a recent report and shows the extent of how women’s gender is impacting the health care they receive. And it’s happening right here in Australia.
More than half (55%) of women surveyed in Nurofen’s ‘Gender Pain Gap Index Report’ felt they have had their pain ignored or dismissed compared to only 48% of men. Almost a third of the women said this was because their GP didn’t take their pain seriously.
There are multiple other studies showing that men and women are treated differently by health professionals when it comes to pain management. In one study, men were given more time and attention than women even when both presented with exactly the same symptoms.
The other important point about gender is that women are, frankly, conditioned to just ‘get on with it’. We try not to make a fuss. We go to work, we grin and bear it while putting everyone else first, because that’s what society has taught us, that’s what’s expected of us.
And, of course, women shouldn’t just ‘get on with it’. We should feel comfortable talking about pain, telling our doctors, bosses and loved ones how it’s affecting us and asking for pain relief and support.
We need to ensure that pain management is fair and effective for women. We need to challenge gender norms held by health professionals – that women can and should ‘put up’ with pain. Women need to be listened to and believed.
Dr White: Chronic pain and many pain conditions, such as migraine or fibromyalgia (a chronic condition that causes body pain and muscle stiffness) affect a much higher proportion of women.
It’s hard for any of us to ignore the statistics. Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2022 found that nearly 74% of women experienced bodily pain, compared to just over 68% of men.
It also found that just over 66% of women said pain impacted their work, compared to just over 58% of men.
We don’t know the exact reasons why this is the case – there are likely to be many reasons. But given the resounding statistics, this surely deserves further exploration and research.
Medical research has traditionally focused on the male experience of health conditions, including pain, so it’s now playing catch-up to capture the female experience.”
Dr White: There is a distinct difference in how females and males, whether that’s people or laboratory animals, experience pain. What we’re talking about here is a sex difference – a difference in our biology.
Medical research has traditionally focused on the male experience of health conditions, including pain, so it’s now playing catch-up to capture the female experience.
Put in very simple terms, females have more pain receptors, and different pain receptors, compared to males. And then how we experience pain, how it’s transmitted around the body, is also different.
The exact ins and outs of this is still being studied, but it has huge potential knock-on effects for women’s health and pain conditions.
Dr White: The impacts run deep. If women’s pain is being ignored or dismissed, they’re not getting the treatment they need to live well.
But there’s momentum slowly building around having far more open discussions about women’s pain. The Victorian Women’s Health Advisory Council, of which I am a member, has commissioned an Inquiry into Women’s Pain in Victoria, as I think this will shine an even brighter light on the issue.
Dr White: If there’s one thing I want women to get angry about and call for change on, it’s to make sure medical research and health care takes sex and gender into account. Health care and medicines have largely been designed to work for men, which means women are missing out on the best health care – not just in Australia, but across the world.
There’s a growing chorus of women demanding better in terms of their health care, and Jean Hailes is right here for it!
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