Pain is an invisible phenomenon that we all experience at one time or another in our life. Women experiencing pain often find themselves having to advocate harder to be taken seriously by healthcare professionals. Studies upon studies show that women are often brushed aside when they present with pain, and can be due to many reasons. Innate sexism, presumption that pain is inevitable for women—particularly abdominal pain—and women presenting different signs and symptoms of ailments relating to the pain in which they are describing.
On average, women in the ER will wait 15 minutes longer than men for pain relief, they are also less likely to be given any narcotic or opioid pain medication and more likely to be given something sedative instead. The implicit bias of hysteria in women does still exist in today’s world, but that might not be the only thing impacting women’s experiences of pain. Women exhibit and experience pain differently than men do. Abdominal pain is particularly more difficult for women to experience as it is often blamed on “normal” pain women might experience. Appendicitis might be downplayed as menstrual cramps for example… In fact, according to a 2012 paper published in the International Journal of Surgery, errors in diagnosing appendicitis ranged from 12% – 23% for men and was doubled for women at 24%–42%.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743919112000246
