Book tip “Unharmed”: How female pain is underestimated, ignored and devalued

“Unharmed. “Women and Pain” is a GLAMOR Book Club Pick on December 12, 2024

Men are considered strong, women are supposedly not – a stereotype that distorts reality: women give birth to children, experience painful periods, suffer from chronic pain and are more affected by domestic and sexual violence. Eva Biringer explains in “Unharmed,” how women’s pain is ignored, devalued and fetishized. A circumstance that endangers women’s health.

Female pain is less likely to be taken seriously

Like all people and especially women, I know pain. Let me tell you a story. It is personal, as pain is. Pain has been my constant companion for over a year. It started with my favorite sport, bouldering. After a particularly intense session, my elbow gave out. A few days later I could barely move it.

When, weeks later, I finally made an appointment with a renowned sports orthopedist, I was confident. Side note: I much prefer going to female doctors rather than male doctors. In the end, a frantic doctor entered the examination room. He made me stretch out my arm, gave me a cortisone injection and sold me a bandage for 40 euros.

A few months later, still in pain, I sat across from my GP. Instead of responding compassionately to my now chronic pain, he snapped at me that it was “myself to blame” for my pain and that I was “stupid” because bouldering was the worst sport for the body. I just sat there, listening to the blood rushing in my ears and my heart racing. Did this doctor just have that? Really Said? In response to my disbelieving and horrified face, he responded only slightly aggressively: “Well, I can see that I’ll get a bad Google rating, but I can handle it.”

I’ll spare you my further elbow odyssey, perhaps only this much: Hardly any doctor took me seriously. Why is that? “Although women can describe their pain better than men, this is their undoing,” writes Eva Biringer in “Unhurt.” Women who have already been affected by mental illness are generally not given any trust. She’s just crazy, you know?

But how are we supposed to learn to listen to our bodies if medical professionals don’t take our pain seriously? Aside from my Grey’s Anatomy binge-watching adventures, I know nothing about medicine. I have no choice but to trust the doctors. The emotional pain, this not being taken seriously as a patient, tears a small hole in my heart every time.

Medicine is made for men

In the world and also in medicine, the following applies: men are the norm. Medications work differently on women. You feel more side effects because the preparations are primarily tested on male animals or men. Women have different symptoms than men when they have a heart attack and are discovered later.

At the same time, doctors also lack knowledge: As knowledge gap This refers to both the insufficient data available on gender and the lack of knowledge about diseases that tend to affect women.

The credo applies: women have to endure pain

Another problem is that female pain is evaluated differently than male pain, as Eva Biringer writes in her book. This difference is also called Gender pain gap described. Women are told not to act like that. Period pain is a part of life, just like the pain of childbirth.