Historically, women have been ignored and deemed less important in healthcare settings. Starting in Ancient Greece, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle believed that women were essentially malformed men and even that the uterus “roamed around the body”. In the late 19th century, women were often prescribed with the ‘rest cure’ for post-partum depression which had severe adverse effects in worsening the women’s mental health. In the 1960s, women who reported chronic pain were frequently subjected to psychoanalytic interventions instead of pain treatment; and it wasn’t until 1993 that the Federal Food and Drug Administration reprimanded the 1977 guideline that women capable of being pregnant were banned from phase one and phase two of clinical research. Misogyny continually undermines a woman’s ability to receive adequate healthcare and be taken seriously by medical professionals – especially when it comes to pain management. There need to be major societal changes made before women can receive the care they need accurately and timely. 

One of the primary issues in women’s healthcare is historic and contemporary sexism in medicine. According to research by Khan (2024), “Women are deemed to be emotional and perceived to exaggerate their symptoms of pain, which restricts their access to adequate medical treatment,” (page 2). With this stigma, women are more often prescribed sedatives and anti-depressants rather than analgesics, leading to poor pain relief and management (Andereggen, 2025). That is a major part of the constant problem in healthcare: women are viewed as both more dramatic and weaker than their male counterparts and receive less care particularly with pain because of this. This stigma is built at a young age, and women are shown constantly that healthcare professionals will not always be accurate and timely with treatment while medication simultaneously will not always be enough for pain. This ignorance of pain not only has potential harm psychologically but physically as well in cases where women wait years for a proper diagnosis, meaning that treatable conditions can worsen before they are taken seriously. 

Andronomativity is the idea that the male experience, body, and values are “normal” or “standard” and rendering female experiences as “other” (Eriksson, 2018). With this concept in mind, a special interest group for the International Association for the Study of Pain found that females are underrepresented in both human and animal medical trials and that women’s health funding receives only 6% of private investment (Nagpal, 2026). Medical misogyny is another term for this phenomenon, and it directly results in under-studied female medical conditions, pain control that overlooks anatomical differences, and the psychological factors that shape women’s pain differently than men’s. While women represent 60% of those struggling with psychiatric disorders, the average participation rate of females in these trials was roughly 42% (Colino, 2024). In situations like that, which are still common among almost all trials, women cannot expect to get adequate treatment if they are not a part of the trial phases. 

All of this leaves many questions about the fairness and accuracy of medicine. Are women properly included in pain medication trials? Can healthcare change? The question to cover all this, how is women’s pain handled differently than men and what are the implications? 

In healthcare, the female experience with pain is often ignored or poorly treated due not only to the lack of research but also underlying societal gender bias; all of which can negatively impact women’s psychological and physical health. 

There are many necessary changes needed in order to reverse the effects of gender bias in healthcare. First, women need to be accurately included in pain trials to improve medication. There also needs to be a more gender specific curriculum in medical school so doctors have the tools needed to better treat their female patients. For every step forward, there seems to be a step back. In 2024, an initiative to advance women’s health research was put into effect; but as of early 2025, funding cuts have been made to the Women’s Health Initiative. Other countries have made major steps towards equality. Canada has a department dedicated to their Women and Gender Equality Act (WAGE) which mandates that the federal government creates policies that advance women’s healthcare. Finally, if there was more diversity in medical professions women would likely receive better care. If female voices are given more weight and meaning in medical settings, there will be vast improvements made to their quality of care. 

In modern society, it is vital that healthcare systems across the country (and the world) increase their efforts to improve the treatment of and research on women’s pain. These changes would better women’s experiences within the system and help to improve the female perspective on the viability of pain treatment.