Female discrimination in the health system
I was listening to the radio the other day and heard something that surprised me: a woman has more chance to die from heart disease than breast cancer. Indeed, according to Harvard medical school, heart diseases kill six times more women than breast cancer every year. I had no idea!
So, I started digging into this and found out more shocking facts about women’s health, which led to the conclusion that in the healthcare system women are reduced to their breasts and reproductive organs - what has been termed “bikini medicine”.
We all receive an invitation to do a smear test for cervical cancer every 3rd or 5th year, depending on our age. We also know that, at a certain age (between 50 and 70), we are invited to do a mammography screening to check for breast cancer every 3rd year. Don’t get me wrong, I think we do need these invitations, but we don’t get an invitation to check anything else. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Another problem is the difference in symptoms between men and women. We all know that symptoms for a heart attack are a sharp pain in the chest, in the jaw and the left arm. But these are the symptoms that are suffered mostly by men. Only one woman out of two will get these symptoms.
The other symptoms of having a heart attack can be stomachache, feeling nauseous, or weak with unusual fatigue and/or trouble breathing (all the symptoms are listed in this article). Symptoms that can be easily misdiagnosed for something else.
As I wrote in an article about endometriosis a few months ago, women suffering from it have symptoms that can correspond to other diseases, making it difficult to get an accurate diagnosis. This is also true for other diseases. Another issue that I mentioned in my article was how women’s symptoms and pains are often not taken seriously.
How many of you have been to your G.P. and were told that you were listening too much to your body, that it was in your head, or that it was caused by anxiety? Why is that so? Well, it goes down to what doctors learnt in medical schools.
A study reveals that in medical textbooks, images of white men are predominantly used as the main model. Women and people of different races are not studied as much and therefore harder to diagnose and treat. To overcome this lack of knowledge in women, doctors are likely to use the hysteria diagnosis (reported by Gabrielle Jackson in her interview with Dr. Kate Young).
If we look at heart diseases in women, for example, they are more likely to be diagnosed as panic attacks as Jennifer Billock wrote in her article. These misdiagnoses can be fatal to us.
It is known that on average women live longer than men, but did you know that our life span in good health is the same as men? That means that the years we live longer, we live them unhealthy.
Another thing that is often not considered and yet that is affecting women’s health is the mental load (or also called unpaid work) that women are under. Women work full-time jobs not only in the office but also at home. Here is a comic by a French illustrator that explains what mental load is in a very funny way.
The Office for National Statistics showed that women do 60% more unpaid work than men on average. 60%! What does it have to do with women’s health you’ll ask? A lot! Having to do so much paid and unpaid work brings a lot of stress.
Some stress can be good for you: it can challenge you and push your limits. But chronic stress is not your friend. It lowers your immune system and makes you more at risk for infections and other diseases like heart disease. Women generally put work and their family before their own health, so they tend to disregard their symptoms.
All these problems are viciously connected to each other and make women’s health a risk at any age. So please ladies, take care of yourselves. Be selfish and take some well-deserved me-time. Get checked if you have doubts about something, no matter where it is. We have only one health, let’s take very good care of it.
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Written by Elise Van Meerssche
