Women aren't just little men. So why does our healthcare system still treat us that way?
Women aren't just little men. So why does our healthcare system still treat us that way?
A new ABC investigation into Australia's healthcare system has confirmed what so many women already know from lived experience. Being dismissed, misdiagnosed or told your symptoms are normal isn't a one off. It's a pattern, and it's still happening across the country, from GP clinics to emergency rooms.
The reporting spoke to women's health experts, GPs and patients across Tasmania, and the stories will feel familiar to a lot of us.
The story that says it all
One woman, referred to as Heidi, was pregnant with her second child when she developed nausea and unusual skin symptoms and went to an urgent care clinic for help. Instead of being taken seriously, she said she was made to feel like an inconvenience. The doctor who examined her wasn't gentle, and he told her what she was experiencing was normal for pregnancy.
She left with a script and the belief that nothing was really wrong.
It was only later, when she saw her obstetrician, that she learned she had been misdiagnosed. She actually had a staph infection, and the treatment she had been given had made it worse.
"It just makes me really angry, to be honest," she said. "I do think it's a direct reflection on our culture as a whole and treatment towards women, whether it's female medical issues or pregnancy."
Stories like hers are not rare. Dr Natasha Vavrek, who runs a specialist women's health clinic in Tasmania, says she hears them constantly. Women told their haemorrhaging is normal. Women told they're too young for perimenopause, even in their late forties or fifties. One patient told, after her thirteenth miscarriage, not to worry because she was still in her twenties.
"I've had women who have come and sat down in that chair and just burst into tears," Dr Vavrek said, "because they just feel so relieved because they know they're going to be heard and listened to."
That relief says a lot about how rare it still is to feel truly heard by a doctor.
It's not just attitudes, it's the system
Medical misogyny isn't only about individual doctors having a bad day or a blind spot. It's built into the structures around how women's healthcare is funded and researched.
Take Medicare. Dr Vavrek points out that shorter consultations are financially prioritised, even though women's health concerns often take longer to properly assess and treat. Obstetrician Kirsten Connan gave a stark example. The Medicare rebate for a male scrotal ultrasound is higher than for a female pelvic ultrasound, despite the latter often being more complex and time consuming to perform.
Then there's research. Women were only included in medical research studies in Australia from the 1990s, and even now they make up just 30 to 40 per cent of participants in the average study. It wasn't until this year that federal grant applicants were required to even consider sex, gender and sexual orientation as variables in their research design.
Women's health specialist Dr Hannah Chapman put it plainly. "We've got that kind of long history of medical misogyny where all of the research has been conducted on men and just extrapolated to apply to women," she said. "In the same way that children are not little adults, women are not necessarily going to respond to everything in the same way that men do."
Why this matters more than we've been told
The consequences of this go well beyond frustration in a GP's office.
Rebecca White, the federal Assistant Minister for Health and Women, has been direct about the stakes. "We have seen women hospitalised for over medication across the world," she said. "We've also seen delayed diagnosis and treatment because women's symptoms present differently from men's, and so that often means that they are not provided with the timely care they desire, need, and deserve. And in some cases, that can lead to some serious adverse outcomes, including death."
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for Australian women, yet Ms White says it's still generally understood as a disease of men. Because of that, women often don't recognise their own symptoms, and when they present for care, those symptoms can be dismissed as something minor.
"So when they're presenting for care, it can often be dismissed," she said. "Sometimes they're just told to take some pain relief, but they could actually be having a heart attack."
Where does the change start
There is some movement. A $792.9 million women's healthcare package has added the first new contraceptives to the PBS in three decades, alongside menopause treatments and endometriosis medication for the first time in twenty years. Bulk billed specialist centres and a review of gender bias in the Medicare rebate system are also part of the plan.
But as Ms White acknowledges, this kind of change doesn't happen overnight, especially when the doctors being trained today are still learning from a model of medicine built around the male body as the default.
"We have to really start at the beginning," she said, "and recreate a system that has equity built at the centre of it."
What you can do in the meantime
While the system catches up, one of the most powerful things you can do is make your own experience impossible to dismiss.
That means noticing your symptoms, tracking them over time, and connecting the dots between what you're feeling and what's actually happening in your body. It means walking into appointments with clarity instead of hoping you remember everything under pressure in a ten minute consult.
This is exactly why we built Ovum. Not because tracking your symptoms should be your job to compensate for a system that still isn't built for you, but because until that system changes, having the full picture in your hands is one of the strongest forms of advocacy you have.
You deserve to be heard the first time you speak up. We're here to help make sure you are.
Take control of your health, download Ovum now.
Download Ovum now.
Women aren't just little men. So why does our healthcare system still treat us that way?
A new ABC investigation into Australia's healthcare system has confirmed what so many women already know from lived experience. Being dismissed, misdiagnosed or told your symptoms are normal isn't a one off. It's a pattern, and it's still happening across the country, from GP clinics to emergency rooms.
The reporting spoke to women's health experts, GPs and patients across Tasmania, and the stories will feel familiar to a lot of us.
The story that says it all
One woman, referred to as Heidi, was pregnant with her second child when she developed nausea and unusual skin symptoms and went to an urgent care clinic for help. Instead of being taken seriously, she said she was made to feel like an inconvenience. The doctor who examined her wasn't gentle, and he told her what she was experiencing was normal for pregnancy.
She left with a script and the belief that nothing was really wrong.
It was only later, when she saw her obstetrician, that she learned she had been misdiagnosed. She actually had a staph infection, and the treatment she had been given had made it worse.
"It just makes me really angry, to be honest," she said. "I do think it's a direct reflection on our culture as a whole and treatment towards women, whether it's female medical issues or pregnancy."
Stories like hers are not rare. Dr Natasha Vavrek, who runs a specialist women's health clinic in Tasmania, says she hears them constantly. Women told their haemorrhaging is normal. Women told they're too young for perimenopause, even in their late forties or fifties. One patient told, after her thirteenth miscarriage, not to worry because she was still in her twenties.
"I've had women who have come and sat down in that chair and just burst into tears," Dr Vavrek said, "because they just feel so relieved because they know they're going to be heard and listened to."
That relief says a lot about how rare it still is to feel truly heard by a doctor.
It's not just attitudes, it's the system
Medical misogyny isn't only about individual doctors having a bad day or a blind spot. It's built into the structures around how women's healthcare is funded and researched.
Take Medicare. Dr Vavrek points out that shorter consultations are financially prioritised, even though women's health concerns often take longer to properly assess and treat. Obstetrician Kirsten Connan gave a stark example. The Medicare rebate for a male scrotal ultrasound is higher than for a female pelvic ultrasound, despite the latter often being more complex and time consuming to perform.
Then there's research. Women were only included in medical research studies in Australia from the 1990s, and even now they make up just 30 to 40 per cent of participants in the average study. It wasn't until this year that federal grant applicants were required to even consider sex, gender and sexual orientation as variables in their research design.
Women's health specialist Dr Hannah Chapman put it plainly. "We've got that kind of long history of medical misogyny where all of the research has been conducted on men and just extrapolated to apply to women," she said. "In the same way that children are not little adults, women are not necessarily going to respond to everything in the same way that men do."
Why this matters more than we've been told
The consequences of this go well beyond frustration in a GP's office.
Rebecca White, the federal Assistant Minister for Health and Women, has been direct about the stakes. "We have seen women hospitalised for over medication across the world," she said. "We've also seen delayed diagnosis and treatment because women's symptoms present differently from men's, and so that often means that they are not provided with the timely care they desire, need, and deserve. And in some cases, that can lead to some serious adverse outcomes, including death."
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for Australian women, yet Ms White says it's still generally understood as a disease of men. Because of that, women often don't recognise their own symptoms, and when they present for care, those symptoms can be dismissed as something minor.
"So when they're presenting for care, it can often be dismissed," she said. "Sometimes they're just told to take some pain relief, but they could actually be having a heart attack."
Where does the change start
There is some movement. A $792.9 million women's healthcare package has added the first new contraceptives to the PBS in three decades, alongside menopause treatments and endometriosis medication for the first time in twenty years. Bulk billed specialist centres and a review of gender bias in the Medicare rebate system are also part of the plan.
But as Ms White acknowledges, this kind of change doesn't happen overnight, especially when the doctors being trained today are still learning from a model of medicine built around the male body as the default.
"We have to really start at the beginning," she said, "and recreate a system that has equity built at the centre of it."
What you can do in the meantime
While the system catches up, one of the most powerful things you can do is make your own experience impossible to dismiss.
That means noticing your symptoms, tracking them over time, and connecting the dots between what you're feeling and what's actually happening in your body. It means walking into appointments with clarity instead of hoping you remember everything under pressure in a ten minute consult.
This is exactly why we built Ovum. Not because tracking your symptoms should be your job to compensate for a system that still isn't built for you, but because until that system changes, having the full picture in your hands is one of the strongest forms of advocacy you have.
You deserve to be heard the first time you speak up. We're here to help make sure you are.
Women aren't just little men. So why does our healthcare system still treat us that way?
A new ABC investigation into Australia's healthcare system has confirmed what so many women already know from lived experience. Being dismissed, misdiagnosed or told your symptoms are normal isn't a one off. It's a pattern, and it's still happening across the country, from GP clinics to emergency rooms.
The reporting spoke to women's health experts, GPs and patients across Tasmania, and the stories will feel familiar to a lot of us.
The story that says it all
One woman, referred to as Heidi, was pregnant with her second child when she developed nausea and unusual skin symptoms and went to an urgent care clinic for help. Instead of being taken seriously, she said she was made to feel like an inconvenience. The doctor who examined her wasn't gentle, and he told her what she was experiencing was normal for pregnancy.
She left with a script and the belief that nothing was really wrong.
It was only later, when she saw her obstetrician, that she learned she had been misdiagnosed. She actually had a staph infection, and the treatment she had been given had made it worse.
"It just makes me really angry, to be honest," she said. "I do think it's a direct reflection on our culture as a whole and treatment towards women, whether it's female medical issues or pregnancy."
Stories like hers are not rare. Dr Natasha Vavrek, who runs a specialist women's health clinic in Tasmania, says she hears them constantly. Women told their haemorrhaging is normal. Women told they're too young for perimenopause, even in their late forties or fifties. One patient told, after her thirteenth miscarriage, not to worry because she was still in her twenties.
"I've had women who have come and sat down in that chair and just burst into tears," Dr Vavrek said, "because they just feel so relieved because they know they're going to be heard and listened to."
That relief says a lot about how rare it still is to feel truly heard by a doctor.
It's not just attitudes, it's the system
Medical misogyny isn't only about individual doctors having a bad day or a blind spot. It's built into the structures around how women's healthcare is funded and researched.
Take Medicare. Dr Vavrek points out that shorter consultations are financially prioritised, even though women's health concerns often take longer to properly assess and treat. Obstetrician Kirsten Connan gave a stark example. The Medicare rebate for a male scrotal ultrasound is higher than for a female pelvic ultrasound, despite the latter often being more complex and time consuming to perform.
Then there's research. Women were only included in medical research studies in Australia from the 1990s, and even now they make up just 30 to 40 per cent of participants in the average study. It wasn't until this year that federal grant applicants were required to even consider sex, gender and sexual orientation as variables in their research design.
Women's health specialist Dr Hannah Chapman put it plainly. "We've got that kind of long history of medical misogyny where all of the research has been conducted on men and just extrapolated to apply to women," she said. "In the same way that children are not little adults, women are not necessarily going to respond to everything in the same way that men do."
Why this matters more than we've been told
The consequences of this go well beyond frustration in a GP's office.
Rebecca White, the federal Assistant Minister for Health and Women, has been direct about the stakes. "We have seen women hospitalised for over medication across the world," she said. "We've also seen delayed diagnosis and treatment because women's symptoms present differently from men's, and so that often means that they are not provided with the timely care they desire, need, and deserve. And in some cases, that can lead to some serious adverse outcomes, including death."
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for Australian women, yet Ms White says it's still generally understood as a disease of men. Because of that, women often don't recognise their own symptoms, and when they present for care, those symptoms can be dismissed as something minor.
"So when they're presenting for care, it can often be dismissed," she said. "Sometimes they're just told to take some pain relief, but they could actually be having a heart attack."
Where does the change start
There is some movement. A $792.9 million women's healthcare package has added the first new contraceptives to the PBS in three decades, alongside menopause treatments and endometriosis medication for the first time in twenty years. Bulk billed specialist centres and a review of gender bias in the Medicare rebate system are also part of the plan.
But as Ms White acknowledges, this kind of change doesn't happen overnight, especially when the doctors being trained today are still learning from a model of medicine built around the male body as the default.
"We have to really start at the beginning," she said, "and recreate a system that has equity built at the centre of it."
What you can do in the meantime
While the system catches up, one of the most powerful things you can do is make your own experience impossible to dismiss.
That means noticing your symptoms, tracking them over time, and connecting the dots between what you're feeling and what's actually happening in your body. It means walking into appointments with clarity instead of hoping you remember everything under pressure in a ten minute consult.
This is exactly why we built Ovum. Not because tracking your symptoms should be your job to compensate for a system that still isn't built for you, but because until that system changes, having the full picture in your hands is one of the strongest forms of advocacy you have.
You deserve to be heard the first time you speak up. We're here to help make sure you are.
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