Are women treated as second class citizens by the NHS?

[urkidding]

The pill causes clots but a lot of women are supposed to put up with this risk. Good GPs may inform them, it is written in small print in the booklet in their pill packets. The pill causes lots of side effects , depression, weight increase, bloating being some of them. Now it is interesting that the MHRA dealt with the blood clots caused by the Oxford vaccine straight away, yet the pill has hardly changed. I know there are alternatives, but they are less effective. New alternatives can be developed, but the drug companies have no incentive in developing them as the NHS had accepted it in its present form. I very much doubt that men would put up with this sort of medication.

Yes. The government admits this. There's currently an open consultation about how women are treated by the NHS.

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/womens-health-strategy-call-for-evidence/womens-health-strategy-call-for-evidence

It doesn't mean anything will change but I think it's widely acknowledged that women have very different (and often worse) experiences than men.

Absolutely we are second class citizens expected to put up with pain, incontinence etc etc etc and treated with utter contempt.
Black women have the worst treatment, as has been well documented.
The medical profession is inherently racist and misogynist.

There are drugs for men-only with risks of unpleasant side effects.

Men generally have much worse health outcomes for any of the sex-shared possible health outcomes. Men have a good case for saying their health needs are too ignored given they carry a larger burden of morbidity & mortality.

Wikipedia has a few interesting entries about this topic, and quite a bit on the UK history of the birth control pill, but it was a rather brave American woman who financed most of the research - shame that the pill/methods haven't changed much over the years:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_McCormick

@lljkk

There are drugs for men-only with risks of unpleasant side effects.

Men generally have much worse health outcomes for any of the sex-shared possible health outcomes. Men have a good case for saying their health needs are too ignored given they carry a larger burden of morbidity & mortality.

Are their health issues dismissed and ignored, or do they not ask for help until they desperately need it - trying to be macho and not admit weakness, etc.?

I rarely go to my GP, either, but several times over the years I was pushed to stop breastfeeding and take antidepressants. After a blood test for something unrelated, it transpired that my issue was a severe lack of vitamin D. I feel better now with the right treatment, but would a GP have incorrectly diagnosed a man complaining of the same symptoms so quickly?

The pills side effects are well known and absolutely were explained to me when I took it many years ago and it's why my gp would not prescribe it when I sought contraception 18 months ago. They have developed over the years lower risk products, reduced dosage to the minimum but as with all medicines you are balancing the risk of the side effects against the reason you are considering taking it - the not getting pregnant is worth it for many women especially when young, my dd also likes the convenience of no periods when she's on active duty.

The problem with the AZ vaccine is considering the risks from covid (the disease) vs the risks of rare vaccine side effects. At age 50 it's a no brainer, if you get covid you have a significant % chance of needing hospital, having long term side effects etc so prevention is critical. The risk drops off significantly with decreasing age, assuming no underlying conditions - governments are judging at what point the risk of severe side effects of the vaccine (11 in a million at age 25, 2 of which may die according to the bbc more or less programme on radio 4) stacks up against the risk for that age group catching covid and dying or having life altering complications.

3/4 of our 20 something DD's have had AZ as have I despite the fact in other countries we wouldn't have, we are all fine and more than 3 weeks out from vaccination. (Underlying medical conditions meant early vaccination and I'm a carer!)

So it's not the easiest of calls for governments in summary because younger people are mostly being vaccinated to reduce the spread of the disease as they wouldn't actually get sick themselves but could pass it onto those who couldn't be vaccinated or the vaccine doesn't work eg some cancer patients on chemo and to stop it mutating (the more it spreads the higher chance of mutation). Personally I do understand the risk and we think it's a risk worth taking as it's line with the probability of a clot from a long haul flight

Men have worse health outcomes to a large extent because of the protective effect of oestrogen for women. After the menopause women quickly catch up in terms of poor health.

Women are treated as second class citizens across all of our society.

I don't think it's the NHS, I think women are treated as second class by the medical establishment and society generally.

You can't remove such a long history of injustice quickly. I don't think it's any sort of conspiracy, rather the results of hundreds of years of women being less important than men. Men until very recently (still?) have been the default version of human and women seen as other/exceptions/not considered.

The NHS is probably a better system than some for healthcare because women have equal access to it.

YANBU

Nobody has to take the pill though, plenty of other methods of contraception. There are side effects to most medications whether make or female.

YANBU. Women are expected to just accept feeling exhausted etc etc during perimenopause. Women's sexual problems are largely ignored but god forbid a man should lose his sex drive. There are so many more examples.

Isn't this why women using the pill have their BP and weight monitored annually? In recognition of the risks to health, hence needing to annually review whether it is still appropriate to be prescribed

I do think a lot of women ignore the risks of the contraceptive pill - probably because they’re generally young & healthy, they think it won’t happen to them. Where I work the GP’s are very strict on monitoring weight & bp, and prescribing accordingly, but quite a lot of women are huffy about coming in for checks, and God forbid the GP says the pill isn’t suitable for them.

Regarding the pill, it’s up to women to make their own decision. However I don’t think the NHS makes enough effort to make sure women understand the risk, and teenage girls especially are unlikely to understand.

Regarding other healthcare for women, the NHS is atrocious. There’s insufficient support for pregnancy and birth, and women have very little support in hospital when they’ve just given birth. When I gave birth the nurses said they weren’t allowed to help me look after my baby even though I was incapacitated. When I asked for breastfeeding support I was told it had been cancelled due to funding cuts. Post maternity care was lacking and support to repair birth injuries was basically non existent. I need surgery to repair my stomach and the NHS has told me I’ll have to go private. The only thing they can offer me on the NHS is pain medication. I don’t want medication - I want surgery so the pain will stop!

Healthcare for women is atrocious. I was told for years that my pain and mid-cycle bleeding was just "one of those things" that some women get. I was sent away time and time again. When I was finally properly investigated, I had stage 4 endometriosis which was causing one of my kidneys to swell. Another incident, before this, was recovering in hospital after a c-section and the loss of my baby. I had to ask for painkillers, they were rarely offered and I was denied anything stronger than paracetamol and ibuprofen after a couple of days "in case of dependance". Lovely to be left in physical pain as well as deep grief.

Gender bias in medicine and medical research.
“For much of documented history, women have been excluded from medical and science knowledge production, so essentially we’ve ended up with a healthcare system, among other things in society, that has been made by men for men”- Quote from a link below.
It’s a fact that until the 90’s there was male bias in all available medical literature, women weren’t included in medical trials, female human bodies weren’t a part of many studies as it was assumed they were mostly the same as men.
Yes, until the 1990’s.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1761670/
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/13/the-female-problem-male-bias-in-medical-trials
Loads more available if you search.

Defiantly! Especially with that stupid Speculum! So painful and uncomfortable. Couldn't they have made one with silicone?

YANBU and I’m so put off by some of the alternatives.

You just need to look at the threads from past year (mine included) absolutely begging and pleading to have implants/coil removed only to be told no, you have to leave expired/unsuitable contraception in your body against your will.

@secular39

Defiantly! Especially with that stupid Speculum! So painful and uncomfortable. Couldn't they have made one with silicone?

Try asking for the "virginal speculum"

It's smaller.

@lljkk the link you attach is for a chemo drug for prostate cancer. What do you think are in chemo drugs targeted at women eg ovarian/womb/cervical cancer? Moonbeams, jellybeans and unicorns???

As a whole I'm inclined to say that women definitely get the shorter end of the stick. And further to that Black women have it even worse so yanbu.

Women’s health issues are definitely not treated as well as they should. I wouldn’t say that men’s health issues are treated all that much better though. I think young- middle aged women just tend to have more reason to seek medical help than men, and that is why the poor treatment is so obvious for women.

The group that seem to be prioritised by the NHS across the board are the over 60s. My parents only have to mention an issue and they’re being referred for blood tests, physio, repeat GP appointments. Same for my mother in law.

As regards some is the remarks about older women, cervical cancer screening is not offered to women over 65.

'Of the 3121 women diagnosed on average each year between 2009 and 2011 in the UK, only 64 were younger than 25 compared with 616 who were older than 65.1.As the population ages, this number of older women affected is set to increase.We argue that screening programmes should reflect this.' ( British Medical Journal).

Agree with Fizzy - one of the main problems is female under representation in medical research. How can GPs be expected to prescribe correctly when there's no evidence about the outcome of various medications on female bodies?