Even when girls and women say, out loud, that they are experiencing pain, people, including medical professionals, are more likely to minimize or dismiss what they say.
I had a headache that lasted for years. It was there when I woke up and there when I went to sleep. I got so used to it that one day, when my husband, bemoaning a rare headache, asked if we had any painkillers, I realized that for me the exceptional day was not having a headache. The doctors I consulted suggested a whole range of reasons and prescriptions, but none helped. Turns out, I did what most women not only do but are encouraged to do: live with the pain and discomfort.
All over the world, women, for a variety of reasons, experience much higher rates of pain than men. More than 100 million Americans report living with chronic pain, and the vast majority are women. Yet, doctors discount women’s reports of pain and are more likely, when treating women, to discount women’s experiences of pain as emotional or psychological discomfort that they have to learn to live with.
First, people have a difficult time recognizing women’s pain. Not in an abstract sense, but in an actual, practical, “Does that expression on her face mean she is in pain?” way. People are much better at reflexively decoding pain when a man’s face reflects it than when a woman’s does.