Regarding women's health, there are two conventionally accepted trends: on the one hand is the romanticized idea that women "can tolerate absolutely anything," starting with the complicated process of childbirth.
On the other hand, there is the notion that they always overreact when they complain due to their "unskippable dramatic nature."
The reality is overwhelming in these cases: underestimating symptoms or telling a woman that she "exaggerates" when she complains of pain has led to numerous erroneous diagnoses that trigger irreversible sequelae, prolonged discomfort, or more severe conditions.
According to author Gabrielle Jackson (in the book Pain and Prejudice: A Call for Women to Take Up Arms and Own Their Bodies), one of the most downplayed conditions in women by medical professionals is endometriosis.
Although it has been the subject of various scientific investigations for over a century, endometriosis has no clear cause or cure. Therefore, there is a tragic lack of understanding of the patients dealing with it.
To get the idea into clear numbers: Mayo Clinic states that 15% of women worldwide have severe endometriosis while menstruating, but it can take up to 7 or 12 years to be correctly diagnosed. The reason? Male medical specialists will (in most cases) tell them it is the result of "stress," "cramping out of control," or the influence of trying new contraceptives.
In general, excuses abound, and Jackson even exhibits cases where doctors told patients that this pain was "part of being a woman" and, therefore, "should" have enough strength to face it.
Perhaps many believe that the fact that female pain is reduced to this scale is exaggerated, particularly when talking about abdominal pain.
Contrary to this conception, in the article, The girl who cried because of the pain: a bias against women in the treatment of pain, the authors Diane Hoffmann and Anita Tarzian verified through numerous studies that both doctors and nurses tended to give women fewer pain relievers than men.
Moreover, we cannot forget the lasting hysteria" phenomenon" almost a century ago. It seems there is a modern (yet discreet) conspiracy against women again: let us remember that, in the Victorian era, complaining women were diagnosed with hysteria.
Nowadays, there is a hidden predisposition to suggest mental illness in "unhappy" women, as well as the reluctance to investigate in depth the cause of their pain. We can easily assume that endometriosis is not solved by negligence rather than a "lack of resources."
By itself, hysteria came to be considered a physical and exclusive disease of the female gender. It even involved painful surgeries and questionable healing procedures.
In a later period, Sigmund Freud and other contemporaries helped popularize the notion that it was all in mind, specifically, the "deceitful and manipulative mind" of women, the cause of exclusive evils.
Today, it is assumed that society can be called civilized and close to science. The days when hysteria was the answer to all female ailments are long gone, so it is time for specialists to take as seriously a diagnosis as possible.
This is achieved by keeping in mind a simple and individual premise: we all react differently to pain, and the least the sufferer deserves is empathy.
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