The painful side of sexism
As I write this column, I’m snuggled in a comfy armchair, dosed up on ibuprofen with a hot water bottle tucked into my trousers. I’m suffering from primary dysmenorrhoea, a medical condition that commonly involves waves of pain radiating from a person’s abdomen to their legs or lower back, and which may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fatigue, fever, headache and lightheadedness.
Today I just have the pain, fatigue and nausea. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m suffering from ‘‘period pain’’. Scientists still don’t fully understand why about nine out of 10 of us experience these symptoms just before and during our periods, but decades ago a study estimated that each year, in the United States alone, dysmenorrhoea results in 600 million lost work hours and US$2 billion (NZ$2.9b) in lost productivity.
With such a massive economic impact, I’m surprised there aren’t better treatments than ibuprofen and a hot water bottle. Turns out there’s at least one, but for reasons we can only speculate about, it never got further than one clinical trial.
Five years ago, Dr Richard Legro, an obstetrics and gynaecology professor, published data showing that a vaginal dose of the drug sildenafil citrate could completely alleviate the severe pain experienced by women with primary dysmenorrhoea. Unfortunately, the trial had to end early because the funders decided to pull the last two years of money – the sum of about US$60,000. And that’s where it ends, as a short scientific publication in the journal Human Reproduction, while women in severe pain continue to suffer. The drug has another name – Viagra.
It’s taken safely by millions of men to give them an erection.
Stories like this make me livid and show just how far we are from achieving gender equality.
Friday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. To coincide, there’s a new book out called Invisible Women, where author Caroline Criado Perez promises to reveal how, more than a century since the first International Women’s Day, biased data that excludes women means more than just a lack of effective treatments for period pain. I’m looking forward to reading it. And before you ask, International Men’s Day is November 19.