Why Do Doctors Dismiss Women’s Pain?

When multiple surveys show that the majority of women in the UK feel their health concerns have been dismissed by a GP, the question becomes unavoidable: why does this keep happening? The dismissal of women’s pain is not about individual doctors alone, but about a complex interplay of medical training, cultural bias, systemic pressures, and a long history of overlooking women’s health.

A Long History of Gender Bias

The roots of this issue run deep. For centuries, women’s health complaints were often attributed to “hysteria” — a diagnosis derived from the Greek word for uterus. Women with unexplained pain, fatigue, or psychological distress were frequently labelled as hysterical or emotionally unstable rather than being investigated for underlying medical conditions. This historical lens shaped how women were seen: as unreliable narrators of their own bodies.

Even though the term hysteria was formally removed from medical classifications in the 20th century, its legacy persists. Research in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) shows that women are still more likely than men to have symptoms attributed to stress, anxiety, or depression. For example, women presenting with chest pain are often told they are experiencing panic attacks, while men with the same symptoms are immediately tested for heart disease.

This systemic scepticism means women often have to advocate repeatedly — and sometimes aggressively — to be taken seriously, adding emotional strain on top of physical suffering.

The Evidence Gap in Women’s Health

Another key factor is the knowledge gap. For much of modern medical history, women were excluded from clinical trials. Up until the early 1990s, US guidelines even barred women of childbearing age from participating in drug research. As a result, treatment protocols, drug dosages, and disease models were developed primarily with men in mind.

The consequences are still visible today. Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for women globally, yet women’s symptoms differ from the “classic” male pattern of crushing chest pain. Instead, women may experience nausea, back pain, or extreme fatigue — symptoms that are often dismissed as anxiety or indigestion. A 2020 study in the European Heart Journal found that women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack.

Autoimmune disorders offer another striking example. Conditions such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis disproportionately affect women, yet diagnosis often takes years. In the UK, women with endometriosis — a painful gynaecological condition — wait on average seven to eight years for a diagnosis, according to Endometriosis UK. During this time, their pain is frequently dismissed as “bad periods” or psychosomatic.

The lack of data on female biology perpetuates diagnostic blind spots, meaning women continue to bear the brunt of medical uncertainty.

How Pain Is Managed

Even once diagnosed, women’s pain is often managed differently from men’s. A 2018 review in Pain Medicine analysed emergency department records and found that women were less likely to receive strong painkillers and more likely to be prescribed sedatives. The implicit message: men’s pain is physical and warrants treatment; women’s distress is emotional and requires calming.

This disparity extends to chronic conditions. Women reporting long-term pain, such as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, are more likely to be told their symptoms are “all in their head.” By contrast, men presenting with similar symptoms are more likely to be referred for further tests or specialist consultations.

Such patterns erode trust in healthcare. Many women report avoiding appointments altogether because they anticipate being dismissed. This not only delays care but can also worsen outcomes for conditions that depend on early intervention.

Social Conditioning and Stereotypes

Doctors are not immune to the cultural narratives that shape society. Gender stereotypes filter unconsciously into clinical interactions. Women are often perceived as more emotional or prone to exaggeration, while men are seen as stoic. These assumptions mean that when women describe severe pain, it may be discounted as overreaction, whereas men’s complaints are treated as credible and unusual.

For women of colour, the problem is even more acute. Research in the US and UK has shown that Black women are less likely to receive adequate pain relief during childbirth. Some studies suggest this stems from false beliefs that Black people have higher pain tolerance — a dangerous stereotype that has persisted since the era of slavery. In the UK, maternal mortality rates for Black women remain four times higher than for white women, according to MBRRACE-UK.

Intersecting factors such as age, disability, and socioeconomic status can amplify these disparities, creating layers of bias that affect how women’s pain is received and managed.

System Pressures

Beyond cultural factors, the healthcare system itself contributes to dismissive encounters. GPs often have just ten minutes per consultation. Faced with time pressure and complex caseloads, many fall back on pattern recognition and “common” explanations. Symptoms such as bloating, fatigue, or pelvic pain — often reported by women — are vague and overlap with multiple conditions. In a pressured setting, these are more likely to be attributed to stress or lifestyle than investigated further.

This structural issue is compounded by limited referral pathways and long waiting lists for specialist care. In gynaecology, for instance, delays in access to secondary care can mean years of unmanaged pain before diagnosis. For women, whose symptoms are more likely to be minimised in primary care, these systemic pressures can turn dismissal into a cycle: their pain is overlooked, their conditions progress, and their outcomes worsen.

Moving Forward

Addressing the dismissal of women’s pain requires systemic change. Evidence points to three areas of reform:

1. Better research: Ensuring women are equally represented in clinical trials, with sex-specific analysis of results. This would provide the data needed to refine diagnosis and treatment for conditions that disproportionately affect women.

2. Medical education reform: Training doctors to recognise sex and gender differences in symptoms and to avoid falling back on stereotypes. Some medical schools have begun incorporating gender-sensitive medicine into curricula, but uptake remains uneven.

3. System redesign: Extending consultation times, strengthening referral pathways, and embedding accountability into healthcare systems. Programmes that actively measure and address gender disparities in diagnosis and treatment could help rebuild trust.
   

Listening Saves Lives

The consequences of dismissing women’s pain can be devastating. Jessica Brady, who died at 27 after her cancer symptoms were repeatedly overlooked, is just one example of the life-threatening stakes involved. Similar stories appear across conditions from ovarian cancer to autoimmune disease: women knew something was wrong, but their voices were not acted upon.

Dismissing pain is not simply poor bedside manner; it is a systemic failure that undermines women’s health and costs lives. Bridging the gender gap will require rigorous research, structural reform, and — most fundamentally — a cultural shift in medicine that prioritises listening to women when they say they are in pain.