Women With The Exact Same Conditions As Men Get Different Treatment - recent study

[IwantToRetire]

An analysis found that men were offered more stents, painkillers, and surgery than their female counterparts with the same health problems.

Earlier this year, the government launched a renewed Women’s Health Strategy. This, they said, could help to address “outdated and misogynistic practices around pain relief” and “long-standing disparities” in care.

If a new paper is anything to go by, this is long overdue.

According to research from the University of St Andrew’s, which reviewed 38 studies, “men and women are frequently treated differently by healthcare systems”.

Their analysis found that 33 of the 38 studies, selected because they specifically compared the care of men and women in a health setting, showed significant treatment discrepancies.

This included a trend of women being offered less “active management” than men with the same conditions, including heart failure, Parkinson’s, liver failure, and kidney disease.

Article continues at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/women-vs-men-medical-treatment-same-conditions_uk_6aabb322e4b0812a5f10876b

(This issue has come up on a number of threads, so not surprising but interesting there has been a study.)

Bloody tell me about it. If my DH goes to the GP he gets the red carpet experience, the whole nine yards - follow-up telephone calls, everything. Whereas women are dismissed and made to feel like a nuisance.

All the data, drug research, blah blah blah is based on an average-male-standard. It beggars belief.

One classic I experienced was a male doctor mansplaining to me that a c-section "isn't painful afterwards" as I was lying there in agony a few hours after the op having been given no pain relief at all.

This is definitely true. I don't take the children to the doctor's any more, after being brushed off by the GP. They believed DH when he took our daughter in the following day, complete with a list of every time she'd been sick, and believed him when he said she wasn't keeping down water. I had been sent home with "keep her hydrated, give her Calpol". DD lost 20% of her body weight on that occasion and was in hospital for a week, during which time IV fluids were her only water/nutrient intake.

She's had this rare condition for years now, and DH is the one who goes to hospital with her. I don't trust myself to get the pertinent information across well enough to be taken seriously, and DH gets listened to every time.

I'm agog at the absolutely blatant misogyny being described by some people here - I'd thought it was improving, but clearly I've been lucky - after various dental issues where ex got all the painkillers and I got told to get my own paracetamol, the last two big things I'd had done I was granted actual pain relief. And the same for a hysteroscopy - knocked out and given plenty of pain relief for afterwards - but clearly I've just been lucky, and so much of the health service is still like when I had my kids 15 years ago and I was just left sitting in blood with a newborn just out of reach and no pain relief (after a c-section).

You all need to read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez if you haven't already. Prepare to be angry if you do though!

At one point I told DH to go with his sister to the doctors

and yes it did help her be heard and taken seriously

the thing is / he understood instantly why I suggested it is so very sad

I signed the petition about medical misogyny but I don't think it got much attention, in spite of being promoted for quite a long time on MN (admittedly in very tiny letters at the top of the home page). Sadly, I think women can be a misogynistic as men. You only have to look at the attitude of the call handler in my case, the cruelty of some midwives and the number of handmaidens who support gender ideology and throw women, including lesbians, under the bus. The Aunt Lydias of our society.

There are published medical studies on the age at diagnosis difference men vs women in many conditions.

Bleeding disorders for example can be decades apart (think it is average 16 years). Despite women bleeding more often and therefore there being many more opportunities to be diagnosed.

My last post was clumsily worded. My mind went from health needs to social needs like female only social spaces and online spaces that the handmaidens think should be shared with men.

And men get free viagra on NHS but women can't get B12 to actually function and not get nerve damage...go figure.

I know right. It’s such a travesty. The NHS will happily say they can’t tell who is a woman, but they show they do know who is a woman when it comes to treating them

I keep meaning to buy her new one!

I meant to ask in response to your original post, did you complain about the call handler? Or did your husband?

It is just beyond believe that she not only thought you were some "hysterical" woman but prepared to shout it out.

And even if you had been "hysterical" she would have no idea from where she was what might have caused it.

And in your case was so close to a dreadful outcome.

I would hope that if there was a complaint she would agree to retraining, or maybe accept this is the wrong job for her.

Thanks goodness there was someone who took the right steps.

(I've put the word "hysteria" in quotes as for centuries women's pain and illness has been dismissed as just a symptom of women being ruled by their reproductive system which creates imaginary problems.

For over 2,000 years, "hysteria" served as a convenient medical label to dismiss any female behavior, emotion, or symptom men found inconvenient or confusing.
Treatments ranged from forced marriages and prescribed pregnancies to pelvic massages and institutionalization.
By the 19th century, women were routinely locked in "hysteria wards" for generalised distress, post-partum depression, grief, or anger.)

Article about the treatment of women in Scotland.

Sounds depressingly the same.

https://news.stv.tv/east-central/women-facing-avoidable-deaths-due-to-healthcare-barriers-charity-warns

And men get free viagra on NHS

Men only get free viagra if they qualify for free prescriptions otherwise they have to pay £9.90 per prescription or purchase over the counter.

They still don't have to do multiple blood tests to prove they have an issue that might be causing them to be unable to work and lasting damage to their brain and nerves, usually after paying for years of SSRIs because "I am so tired" means she is depressed usually without further investigation.
Men getting boners is far quicker to resolve. I wonder why women are more often out of work with these basic oversights, yet we have increasing issues with sexual violence?

Alas, this is why my OH comes to a lot of my appointments now. I’ve had a lot of side effects after cancer treatment and some preventative surgery which pushed me into menopause. One particular side effect is that it feels like my libido was also surgically removed. At my first in person menopause clinic appointment I was treated as though I should be grateful just to still be alive, and that my libido problems were a triviality. It took years to get another in person appointment with them, this time OH came along, and suddenly it’s most unfortunate and I should receive extra hormone treatment for it. He didn’t even have to say anything, just sit there looking aggrieved.

Honestly, if you put this as a plot to a tv series, everyone would think this is far fetched.

But as this thread and reports have shown it isn't!

I meant to comment that I dont think you should in any way that it is about you not being able to get the information across. Doctors have to interact with a range of people. And must on occasions think I should check what they are trying to tell me.

But I am 100% sure you express yourself really well. The problem is a doctor who just doesn't listen to women with the same "respect" that they have for men speaking!

@IwantToRetire
Yes, complaints in progress.
Fobbed off twice, 3rd submitted.
When you make a complaint there is a whole page of questions about your sex, your gender identity, whether your GID matches your sex at birth, sexual orientation.
So I don't expect a helpful response because I am just a straight biological woman AND I am over 60. So obviously at the bottom of the heap.

Me too - my DH has always dealt with medical professionals when it comes to the DCs after I was brushed off years ago & he got an appt almost straight away. I don’t even bother trying (haven’t for years) & leave it to DH now.

Wow, awful.