“Wandering Uterus.” The phrase hysteria isn’t one that’s often heard in an official capacity these days, but it only takes a quick Google search to see that its legacy is still very much alive. The misogynistic treatment of women in the healthcare system is an issue that has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and despite the data displaying in black-and-white the harm that this gender bias has on people - it is still far too common.

But there is a sign of good things to come.

The National Women’s Health Advisory Council is officially taking a stand against gender bias in the medical field, and earlier this year released the #EndGenderBias survey. This survey was aimed at getting the perspectives of girls, women, female-identifying people, and healthcare professionals all over Australia in combating this antiquated paradigm.

Gender Bias and Medicine

Among high-income countries, Australia ranks 3rd for healthcare choice, and fifth for quality. Within OECD countries, we rank second for health. We have some of the best on-campus and online medical courses in the world.

So it may feel weird to find out that a third of Australian female-identifying people (more than 4,441,170 women) report that their health concerns are often dismissed. This is an example of gender bias. The European Institute for Gender Equality defines gender bias as “Prejudiced actions or thoughts based on the gender-based perception that women are not equal to men in rights and dignity.” It is prevalent in several major aspects of our society, however, one of the most dangerous places it is infesting is our healthcare system.

Hysteria and History

It can be hard to see it, especially if you aren’t a healthcare professional or don’t talk about this with women very much, but a little research goes a long way. The physical and psychological medicinal sciences have a long history of misogyny. The earliest example comes from Hippocrates (as in “Hippocratic Oath” Hippocrates) when coined the term “hysteria” to define a condition where the uterus moved through the body. Hysteria was then the go-to diagnosis for any woman displaying any malady that doctors (then predominantly male and medical studies revolving primarily around male patients and anatomy) were unable to diagnose. Women were subjected to all kinds of abusive treatment and neglect in order to treat this “hysteria.” This continued for thousands of years.

It is easy to write off Hippocrates as ancient-world quackery, but in the mid-1400s, the Malleus Maleficarum (Witch's Hammer) a guidebook for the hunting of witches, subjected women to biblical judgement in response to their ailments. Signs of what was once deemed “hysteria” now became evidence of possession or corruption by the Devil. Women became not only a victim of evil, but its source, and the medical treatment involved torture, abuse, and execution. Many of these women were victims of the Salem Witch Trials.

Even allowing for the justification of “it was the dark ages, people were superstitious and dumb” although treatment methods have come a long way, it’s unfortunate to say that the sheer quackery around women’s health hasn’t evolved all that much.

The father of psychology, Sigmund Freud, was a trailblazer in the field of psychoanalysis - but he also set the standard of medical misogyny. In 1908, Freud proposed that women suffer from “penis envy,” the phenomenon that when young girls realise they lack a penis, they feel “castrated” and that this phenomenon is the root cause of mental illness in women. Famously publishing in 1925 that ‘women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own’.

While penis envy and Freud’s attitudes to women have mostly expired, the sad fact is that they are still too present. A recent study showed that women are massively underrepresented in medical literature and research. For this reason, when it comes to issues of health, not only are women consistently met with higher rates of dismissal, higher medical costs (even with government assistance), longer diagnosis times and delays, and a lack of care for chronic, debilitating, or severely painful conditions, but they are often believed to be making up their symptoms or reported symptoms.

Why is this Happening?

Women have been asking this question for millennia. Due to dominant social structures favouring a misogynistic worldview, women are often the last consideration when it comes to a variety of systemic issues.

In terms of healthcare, the simple fact is that research and care just aren’t afforded to women, because throughout our history we have had two major consistent social paradigms that - despite best efforts - remain prevalent in society.

The first originates from the earliest days of women’s medicine. The idea that the uterus is some living, shifting creature, moving around the body in a desperate search of semen betrays a male-centric ideology in medicine since its earliest days. A woman’s medical condition is directly related to the presence or absence of a man in her life. From its inception, the medical field has been dominated by the idea that women, in comparison to men, are freakish.

This idea has led to the second major cause of this gender bias in medicine; the fact that women are barely studied in relation to medical conditions. Most medicinal studies are carried out on men, and most clinical trials in the development of medications involve men. This means that when medical practitioners treat patients, all of their expertise is based on the male anatomy, and their successful treatment is based around treatment success in males.

The Survey

The #EndGenderBias survey (closed since October), is a great first step in the right direction. A problem can only be dealt with if the people unaffected by that problem get involved. If only the victims speak up, then they can forever be dismissed as an uncomfortable minority. But the horror of the misogyny in our medical system cannot be ignored any longer. The gender bias inherent in the system is harming our mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends. It’s harming half of our population. It’s harming a staggering number of people.

The lack of accurate diagnoses, as well as delays in treatment plans, and the dismissal of pain in female patients is causing too much hurt to be ignored any longer, and the #EndGenderBias survey should provide a statistical blueprint of what needs to change, where, and how. Now we can only wait for the results and hope that action is forthcoming.