Sexist tropes tha
consultations, led me to a tenacious professor of rheumatology who suspects a random – still unknown – auto-immune condition, probably exacerbated by stress, is to blame, not hypochondria.
My story should not be surprising. Almost half the women eventually diagnosed with an auto-immune disease will have been told they are a hypochondriac or have a mental illness, according to Virginia
Ladd, president of the American Auto-Immune Diseases Association. My experience is – sadly – an example of the ‘gender health gap’ – the differing (poorer) experience women have of the medical profession compared to men. It manifests itself not only in misdiagnosis but also in women and girls having their symptoms taken less seriously.
According to a landmark 2001 University of Maryland study entitled The Girl Who Cried Pain, women in pain were less likely to receive proper treatment than men and more likely to have their symptoms written off as ‘psychological’.
The reasons are myriad – from sexist tropes (‘women complain of pain more’, ‘women are more aware of their pain’) to the under-representation of women working in medicine and research, not forgetting historical factors. Little more than 100 years ago ‘hysteria’ was the go-to diagnosis for any unexplained illness experienced by a woman – and only a woman, as the term didn’t apply to men.
This issue is tackled by Gabrielle Jackson in new book Pain And Prejudice: A Call To Arms For Women And Their Bodies. Jackson has endometriosis and adenomyosis – two gynaecological conditions that cause chronic pain, debilitating periods, fatigue, nausea and other serious, life-altering issues. Endometriosis affects up to one in ten women of reproductive age yet is frequently dismissed by doctors as a ‘period problem’. Shockingly, the average time for a woman in the UK to be diagnosed is between seven and eight years, says the National Institute of Clinical Excellence.
‘I was that girl in the sick bay each month because of “bad periods”,’ says 42-yearold Australian Jackson. ‘No one suggested something might be wrong. A female GP said to me, “Some women have bad periods – you just have to get on with it.” Aged 16, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome but it took another seven years to find out I didn’t have that at all. After demanding a referral, I found I had endometriosis.’