Healthcare sexism is created by institutionalised systemic societal structures that leave us undiagnosed, ignored and gaslit.

Out of all the ways that women are disenfranchised, the medical system seems to be the most dangerous.

From pills to police vests, car design to contraception, it’s time the system started funding, researching, and treating women with the respect we deserve.

The World is Built For Men

We all know the world is built for men. Air conditioners are set to 5 degrees lower than a woman’s metabolic temperature, leaving us huddled at our desks in snow suits while the men rock around in shorts and a t-shirt!

Toilets are designed “equally,” not equitably. Women take longer, often have children or the elderly with them, and can’t queue up at a urinal. Yet every time I go to the theatre, I leap out of that chair as soon as the curtain comes down and bolt for the toilet like it’s a Taylor Swift ticket drop – while my husband’s already back from the bar.

Even our phones aren’t built for us. My husband says, ‘I just don’t drop mine’ when I complain I need yet another case. Do you know why he doesn’t drop it? Because it isn’t 30% too big for his hand!

Ever seen a toddler holding a basketball? They don’t do too well, do they?

And this is before I even get to the actual life-threatening inequities, such as medical treatments, safety equipment like police vests, car seatbelts, airbags, and general design, even period products, all put us at a greater risk of dying. All of this simply because we were considered and tested for.

➡️ This Guardian article sums it up perfectly.

But let’s get into the life-altering inequities!   

Doctors Push Drugs, Not Cures

I just had a friend message me after her endometriosis surgery. I so wish she could have contacted me first.

She hadn’t even asked for pain relief, but they gave it anyway—and she couldn’t speak to refuse it. Her heart rate skyrocketed, her blood pressure dropped, she had spasms, blurred vision, confusion, and nausea. It was terrifying.

That’s not treatment. That’s medical abuse. And yet I keep hearing it over and over again from women in my life.

That isn’t even to mention the plethora of medicines that doctors push on us without thought of the side effects. Contraception and antidepressants would be the worst, but I’ll get to that in another post.

Doctors keep handing out medication like candy, especially to women. Antibiotics for my skin. Antibiotics for my UTIs. I genuinely worry that one day, I’ll die of a cold because my body has become resistant.

Here’s an idea: treat the root cause. Not the symptom. Not the side effect of the drug you gave me last week. Look into my health as an interconnected system, which we as humans are! My endometriosis is an inflammatory disease, not some isolated hormonal issue confined to my reproductive organs.

Women Are Not Drug-Seekers

It’s a cruel contradiction: walk into a GP’s office and you’re offered medication almost immediately. But show up at Emergency in unbearable, visible agony, and suddenly you’re a “drug seeker.” It is healthcare sexism.

Let’s be clear—women with endometriosis aren’t chasing drugs. We’re chasing relief from pain so intense it’s been compared to a heart attack. And yet, we’re left to suffer for hours, sometimes literally on the floor, while staff question our motives instead of treating our symptoms.

I’ve had endometriosis flares so severe I’ve sat in Emergency quietly screaming, and still no one offered pain relief while I waited. It’s dehumanising.

I can’t count how many women I know who’ve stopped going to the hospital for endo flares altogether—not because the pain stopped, but because the judgment did them more harm than the illness. That’s not healthcare. That’s neglect.

Hospitals Perpetuate Healthcare Sexism

I have found I can’t actually even take any strong pain medication. However, when I first began my endometriosis journey, the treatment was always the same.

For hours, I was ignored in the waiting room, as broken fingers and twisted ankles from the football field overtook me as I sat rocking back and forth on the floor like I was having a breakdown, tears streaming down my face for hours.

They would take me in, give me Endone, run their tests, say they didn’t know what it was, and send me home vomiting profusely because I couldn’t handle the opioids.

Their Only Solution is Drugs

I have been to the hospital and explicitly told them I didn’t want any form of opioid or narcotics because I have extremely bad reactions to anything stronger than a Panadol.

And yet when I am screaming in pain, they still offer it to me.

I told them to treat me like an addict, I really couldn’t have the pain killers.

Their response: “We would give an addict the pain relief.”

What?! I was in disbelief! Sure, I understand if that is what they have asked for, but if they have said prior, they don’t want anything; I just couldn’t believe that.

These doctors disregard people’s overall health for their immediate discomfort.

Women Can’t Win

Women can’t win. We are either provided too many drugs, so these doctors don’t actually have to work out what is going on, but just patch the pain, cover up the acne, and clear up the UTI. Or, we are hysterical drug-seeking women just looking for a fix.

And the best part. Half of the medications they give us aren’t even tested on women!

But hey, I’m not able to take down the pharmaceutical companies that run this world, what about something simpler, hey? How about our periods?

Toxic Period Products

Women spend, on average, six years of their lives bleeding! That means six years of using period products! And let’s not even go into the pink tax.

Some of you may be aware that it was only in 2023 that menstrual blood was actually used to test sanitary products.

Menstrual blood is very different to other types of blood. Its viscosity, absorption, and so many other factors make it respond differently to sanitary products. Yet for decades, we have been using a Saline solution!

That is like testing a car with a giraffe driving! No wonder they are often useless, with their stupid sticky wings.

Then there is the whole debacle that arsenic, asbestos, and lead have all been found in sanitary products!

These are toxic to the human body in even trace amounts.

Source: © runLenarun/iStock/Getty Images

And they’re being inserted into the most absorbent parts of our bodies—then leeching directly into our bloodstream.

We’ve known about this for a while now, and yet, no change.

Even the “organic” cotton options are testing higher in arsenic… and cost six times as much.

If they can’t even make period products safe, how can we expect their complex medical systems to treat us fairly?

Nothing is Tested on Women

Medicine

I could write a list a mile long about how the medical and pharmaceutical companies create healthcare sexism. From vaccines to drug trials, women are often excluded from their tests. Yet we all know that women are very different, from our size and structure to our hormones and receptivity to chemicals, as well as the way we metabolise them.

In 2020, researchers found that 96% of the time, women had more adverse reactions than men due to slower drug metabolism.

Women are severely underrepresented in medical testing. Even basic lab tests use male cells. How can we hope to receive equitable healthcare when even the cells used in studies don’t match our biology?

Vaccines

Most vaccines aren’t tested on women, leading to significantly more side effects for the female population than for men. You want to see the extent of healthcare sexism? A study that looked at anaphylactic reactions to vaccines that went from 1990 to 2016 (26 years) found that 80% of anaphylactic reactions in adults were in women! Now this is just one study, but there are thousands more, all saying the same thing. They are not made for us!

Cars

From seatbelts to airbags, and just general design. Women are more likely to be injured and die in car accidents.

Car safety standards? They use male dummies; when they do use female ones, they aren’t accurate and are often tested in the passenger seat. The safe distance from the wheel is set for the long legs of men, not how close we huddle to it, trying to reach. The airbags, the seats, the seatbelts – none of these things take into consideration the difference in our bodies.

This whole thing just really puts me off wanting to even get in a car when pregnant, because there is zero consideration made for that!

Neurodivergent Women

And finally, and I say finally, because my hands are tired of typing, not because this is actually the final inequitable thing that women are underrepresented, ignored and gaslit regarding the medical system in this world built for men.

The last thing is an underdiagnosed, underrepresented percentage of women with neurodivergence.

Women mask better! Why?

We are told to ‘be nice’ and consider other people’s feelings from a young age.

We still see it in our media constantly. I was watching the TV show You yesterday, and the female character, Love, is slapped across the face by her mum while she says that her only job is to look after her twin brother. Why? Why is it the sister’s job to be her brother’s keeper?

Our worth is measured in how polite, sweet, nice, and placated we are. Whilst boys get to be boisterous – I mean, it’s even in the name.

Women Internalise Our Neurodiversity

So, women internalise it. My mum’s ADHD is infuriatingly severe, but in class, she stared out the window; she didn’t climb the walls.

I have dyslexia and dyscalculia, but no one ever noticed because I tried so hard to learn. I wanted to do well, ‘be a good girl’.

They say little girls on a plane will colour in, whilst little boys will climb the chairs. All the symptoms we associate with learning difficulties, ADHD, and Autism all come from the stereotyped male perspective.

A boy who can’t sit still, a boy who stims loudly, a boy and boy, a boy!

I collected crystals, no one thought that was strange. They are pretty, I am a girl.

A boy would collect rocks. That’s a bit weird.

I organised my toys, I was being tidy, looking after my possessions.

A boy lines up his dinosaurs. That’s a bit weird.

I am autistic. I only found out at 27, my male cousin found out at 4. Granted, we present differently, we have different levels of support needs, but this was also like 15 years before I was even born. So, it’s not even an awareness issue. It’s a gendered one.

Healthcare Sexism

• We’re rarely tested on, yet constantly prescribed pills.
• We ask for medication, and we are drug seekers.
• We don’t want drugs; they can’t do anything to help us.
• We bleed monthly, yet are poisoned by toxic products.

Nothing is made for our safety!

Not cars, not personal protective equipment, not medicine, not even period products.

We hide our flaws to look after the people around us, only to be met with misdiagnosis, underdiagnosis or gaslighting. We are ignored. We are told it is in our heads, that it is a body image issue, that we just need contraception, antidepressants, and that having a baby will fix it.

And if we dare do so, we will be met with more misinformation, and plunged into stirrups and pressured into inducing, which are awful ways to deliver a child into the world – and let’s just hope that child isn’t a girl… because she’ll be entering a world still stacked against her.

It’s like that monologue from Barbie about how we can’t win!

Women are disproportionately gaslit by medical professionals, our pain is ignored, and our health is actually impeded by common practice. The medical system is based on a model of neglect towards women. It is healthcare sexism. We don’t even see it. But it is there, it is real, and we are over it!

‘Getting better’ isn’t good enough. Be better!

Send this to a man, send this to a woman, send this to a doctor – just share these stories because the more aware we become about the issue, the less ingrained it might become in our society.

And maybe, those little girls being born will grow up in a changed world, with their brothers by their sides.

If you have experienced medical gaslighting, if you have been ignored, shamed, accused, or generally unsupported because of healthcare sexism, let me know in the comments.

If you feel like you might be struggling with your mood cyclically, check out this post on PMDD in women with endometriosis.