Why women's complaints are dismissed more

19,472 cases. 92% denied. One girl who asked why survivors needed to prove they were broken. Ayesha was 21 when her cousin tried to end her life. Not because she was weak. But because no one believed her. She had filed a sexual harassment complaint against a faculty member. There was CCTV footage. Multiple witnesses. Even other girls who whispered “he did it to me too.” But the committee said: “She didn’t look traumatized enough.” “She didn’t cry during questioning.” “She’s attending classes—so she must be fine.” They rejected her complaint. And Ayesha lost her cousin’s voice forever. But what stuck with her wasn’t the silence that followed. It was the language of rejection—formal, clinical, coded in indifference. “Lack of visible distress.” “Inconclusive behavioral signs.” “Low credibility due to emotional stability.” Ayesha was a psychology student. She knew trauma didn’t always look like a breakdown. Sometimes, it looked like numbness. Like blank stares. Like perfectly spoken sentences hiding swallowed screams. So she did what no one else had done. She audited the language of rejection. Over nine months, Ayesha collected 19,472 closed cases of harassment and assault from academic institutions, workplaces, and complaint panels. She created a database. Searched for patterns. Trained an AI tool to detect recurring phrases that penalized women for not presenting pain correctly. The results were sickening. In 92% of denied cases, victims were judged not just on facts—but on facial expressions, body language, perceived “emotional responses.” Their stories were rejected not because they lacked evidence—but because they lacked visible breakdown. Ayesha built a report: “The Performance of Pain: How Institutional Bias Silences Women Who Survive.” She didn’t name names. But she named what no one else had: That the system wasn’t listening for truth. It was waiting for a performance. The report went viral in women’s groups. Survivor networks shared it like wildfire. One human rights lawyer called it “the first mirror we’ve held up to internalized disbelief.” And then change began. Four major universities rewrote their harassment response training. A leading workplace compliance portal integrated Ayesha’s behavioral bias module into its review system. A national panel announced that “emotional affect” could no longer be used as primary grounds for credibility. And somewhere, quietly, a mother told her daughter: “You don’t have to cry for them to believe you. You just have to speak.” Ayesha never spoke on panels. She still doesn’t use social media under her name. When asked what gave her the strength to do it, she said: “I couldn’t save my cousin. But maybe I could save the next girl who’s told she didn’t look broken enough to be believed.”

84% of women have had experiences of not feeling listened to by a healthcare professional. When faced with such a statistic, as clinicians - we must pause and reflect. Women across the world are telling us - through stories, surveys, and silence - that their symptoms are being dismissed. And they are right: 🟦 Women are more likely to be misdiagnosed with mental health conditions when they present with physical symptoms. 🟦 It takes an average of 8 years for a woman with endometriosis to receive a diagnosis. 🟦 In emergency departments, women wait longer than men for pain medication—even when reporting similar levels of pain. This phenomenon has a name: 𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐚𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. It’s when healthcare professionals - often unintentionally - minimise, dismiss, or psychologise a patient’s symptoms. The result? Patients start to question their own bodies. They delay seeking care. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐀𝐅𝐄 in a system meant to protect them. _____________________________ So how do we do better as clinicians? It starts first with the concious awareness that this is indeed a problem. We need to 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 and 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬. It starts with asking the question: "What are we doing today that makes women feel unheard?" And more importantly, "How can we make them feel like we genuinely hear them?" It starts first by being a 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐧. Because NO ONE has to prove they’re suffering to be taken seriously. P.S. Have you experienced medical gaslighting before? Dr Claudia Pastides | Katherine Church | Alice McGee, MD | Kasia Pokrop | Dr Nikita Kanani MBE | Bianca Glang, MSc. | Valentina Milanova |

Five doctors. Eight years. Eighty percent. These aren't random numbers. This is the brutal arithmetic of women's healthcare. 👉 Eight years on average to receive diagnoses for conditions like endometriosis. 👉 Five doctors before autoimmune conditions are recognised. 👉 Eighty percent of autoimmune patients are women. When the system is designed to doubt you, trusting yourself becomes a radical act. For decades, we've treated women's health concerns like inconvenient noise rather than critical signals. We've dismissed intuition as anxiety. Fatigue as depression. Pain as psychosomatic. The statistics are damning: ❗ Women with endometriosis wait an average of eight years for a diagnosis. Not a solution, just a diagnosis. ❗ For axial spondyloarthritis, women wait two years longer than men. ❗ 57% of women report being wrongly diagnosed by doctors ❗ Over 84% report not being listened to by healthcare professionals. This isn't just inefficiency. It's systemic invalidation. When a woman says, "Something is wrong," and is told, "Your tests are normal" We're not just missing medical opportunities. We're reinforcing the dangerous message. That her lived experience is less reliable than a blood test. 💡 But our bodies speak in patterns, not just data points. 👉 The headaches that cluster around certain weeks of your cycle. 👉 The fatigue that coincides with specific foods. 👉 The inflammation that flares with certain emotions. These connections don't show up in standardised tests. They emerge through persistent, attentive listening-to women themselves. The most valuable diagnostic tool isn't just in a laboratory. It's also in the conversation that happens when we truly hear what women are telling us about their bodies. This deeper listening isn't just a nicety. It's a medical necessity. ✨ Because when we dismiss women's intuitive knowledge about their bodies, we're not just being insensitive. ✨ We're actively undermining health outcomes. True innovation in women's health won't only come from more tests or more medications. It will come from creating systems that validate, investigate, and connect the dots between women's lived experiences and clinical findings. This is why I created Aeva Health finally a place where Women's health is taken seriously, solutions are provided, tangible tools and personalised insights given. Science-backed, evidenced based solutions that are made for you. We don't just treat symptoms, we treat root causes. When have you known something was wrong despite being told otherwise? What helped you trust yourself?

It frustrates me that women aren't taken seriously in medical situations. I see it time and time again in my obstetrical negligence cases—and the consequences are devastating. The pattern is heartbreakingly consistent: A woman says, "Something doesn't feel right." The medical staff responds, "You're just anxious." A woman reports unusual pain. She's told, "It's normal. First-time moms always worry." A woman insists something is wrong with her baby. The response? "The monitors look fine. Try to relax." By the time the medical team finally acts, it can be too late. I've represented mothers whose instincts were dismissed until their babies suffered permanent brain damage, physical disabilities, or worse. These aren't rare cases. They're alarmingly common. Studies confirm this isn't just anecdotal. Women's pain is systematically undertreated. Their symptoms are more likely to be attributed to anxiety or emotion rather than physical causes. For pregnant women, this dismissal can have life-altering consequences—not just for them, but for their children. As a medical malpractice attorney, I fight for these families after the damage is done. But I can't help wondering how many injuries could be prevented if we simply listened to women in the first place. To the healthcare professionals reading this: Trust your patients when they tell you something is wrong. Believe women when they say they're in pain. Remember that nobody knows their body better than they do. To the women reading this: Your intuition matters. Your voice deserves to be heard. Never stop advocating for yourself and your baby.

✨ Let’s set the record straight: Tylenol does not cause autism. And yet, here we are, still spending energy debating a myth instead of addressing the real issues. What’s underneath this debate is more troubling: a long history of dismissing, doubting, and minimizing women’s pain. Here’s the bigger picture: • Women experience more frequent pain events than men, yet 80% of pain research is done on men. • 70% of chronic pain sufferers are women, but doctors are more likely to under-treat their pain. • The U.S. maternal mortality rate is more than double that of peer nations. So when misinformation about a safe, widely used medication circulates, it’s not just annoying, it’s dangerous. It reinforces a culture where women’s voices are questioned, their choices scrutinized, and their health outcomes neglected. 💡 Women’s health deserves rigor, respect, and resources. 💡 Our pain and experiences deserve to be believed, not dismissed. 💡 Our energy should go to advancing care, not fighting myths. It’s time to stop wasting energy on outdated narratives, and start building a healthcare system that actually listens to women.

Autoimmune disease isn’t just a health crisis—it’s a women’s health crisis. Yesterday, I shared how the standard of care is failing autoimmune patients. But there’s another side to this epidemic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: 80% of autoimmune patients are women, with some conditions up to 16 times more common in women. And yet, despite making up the vast majority of cases, women are more likely to be dismissed, misdiagnosed, or ignored throughout their healthcare journey. Nearly half of women with autoimmune disease have been labeled as "chronic complainers" while seeking a diagnosis. Instead of investigating their symptoms, they’re dismissed—told they’re stressed, anxious, or just need more rest. When autoimmune disease goes untreated, symptoms worsen, the burden of disease grows, and in many cases, irreversible damage occurs. So why are women more likely to develop autoimmune disease? 🔬 Genetics may play a role. Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one—which means a greater number of immune-related genes at risk for mutation. A 2024 Stanford study found that a molecule called Xist, which helps “turn off” one of the two X chromosomes in females, may inadvertently trigger the immune system—causing the body to mistake parts of this process as a threat and attack its own cells. 🌀 Hormonal shifts are a major trigger. Autoimmune conditions tend to emerge or flare around puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause—key moments when hormone levels fluctuate. The immune system and hormones are deeply interconnected, yet this link is rarely explored in the standard of care today. 🦠 Gut microbiome differences could be a factor. We don’t yet know why, but some studies suggest that men tend to have protective gut microbes, which may reduce their risk of developing autoimmune disease. This area of research is still in its early stages—largely because women’s health has been historically underfunded and overlooked. At the end of the day, women with autoimmune disease aren’t just fighting their symptoms—they’re fighting to be taken seriously. Next week, I’ll be sharing the day-to-day realities of living with autoimmune disease—the brain fog, the fatigue, the unpredictability—how it impacts careers, relationships, and mental health, and what I wish I knew earlier in my own health journey. #AutoimmuneAwarenessMonth

One in 7 women have chronic pelvic pain. Despite its prevalence, women often tell me they feel dismissed by the health system, even turned away from care. The bias is real. I recently noticed an uptick in referrals from one pain clinic to mine. Confused, I learned that pain clinics (even in my highly resourced metro Boston area) turn patients away, saying "we don't do pelvic pain." The barriers to pain care for all women are multifactorial: bias, stigma, lack of knowledge, $$$ considerations, or blaming pain simplistically on factors such as hormones, anxiety, depression, or a history of abuse. For the women who have been told "the pain is in your head," we do know that there are many central nervous system factors that influence pain. But when I temporarily anesthetize a nerve to help with a diagnosis and the pain is for the first time in years completely gone, many of my patients are in tears. To all the women with chronic pain or chronic pelvic pain, team-based treatment is possible. I'm not sure how to quickly change the stigma against women with pain in the medical field. Some of the biases against women have deep roots and require a cultural and medical shift. But first steps are to call out the bias and discrimination towards women with pain as well as provide evidence-based education are a start. I especially like the patient-facing resources in "Facing Pelvic Pain," led by Dr. Elise De. I'm hopeful that by empowering our patients and our providers with the right resources, we can all understand that supporting women's pain is rewarding and the right thing to do. "I don't do pelvic pain," just isn't the right answer. https://lnkd.in/er-2uUKY #pelvicpain #chronicpain #womenspain Tania Di Renna, President-elect of the Canadian Pain Society, phenomenal conversation today. Thank you for launching this post!

I've been thinking a lot about women's pain and how commonly it is dismissed, minimized, or outright ignored. If you have told your healthcare provider that you are having pain and had any of these experiences, you know what I'm talking about! Reflecting back on my years as a medical student and trainee, I definitely did not receive enough education on this important issue. I was also recently reminded of an excellent article on the topic written by Anushay Hossain in The Washington Post last year. Women often suffer from lack of proper diagnosis and treatment for chronic pain related to various conditions such as endometriosis. It is also not uncommon for pain related to gynecologic procedures such as IUD insertions and cervical biopsies to be under-treated. What's really scary is that there is strong evidence that even women who are experiencing pain due to serious and potentially life-threatening conditions such as heart attacks, stroke and cancer may not taken seriously. It is important for women to keep advocating for themselves. Marjorie Jenkins, dean of the University of South Caroline School of Medicine Greenville, who was featured in the article, urged women against feeling pressured to accept an "everything is normal" non-diagnosis. I also believe that when healthcare providers do not have the necessary diagnostic tests to identify certain causes of chronic pain, and lack effective, targeted treatments to offer for many of the pain syndromes that women live with, we tend to be more dismissive because we don't know what to do to alleviate the pain. This is one of the myriad reasons why increased investment in research and development to address unmet needs in women's health is so urgent. #WomensHealth #Painmanagement #Painrelief #Healthcare #FutureOfHealthcare https://lnkd.in/ezCfc6uD

Medical misogyny – is anyone surprised? I’m not. I spent four years trying to get help with my menopause, that was after four years of not knowing what it was and being gaslit by the medical profession. Over the years I visited four doctors and three medical practitioners asking and ultimately begging for help. If you are a woman and have experienced PMDD, endometriosis, fibroids, heavy bleeding, extreme period pain or a whole raft of other female specific issues including menopause, there is a high chance you too will have been dismissed, experienced eye rolling, tutting or mis diagnosis. If you have other issues such as ADHD or Lupus you are likely to have experienced the same. Why? Because in the case of the last point, we as women don’t exhibit the same symptoms in the same way as men. Regarding female reproductive health, it’s often because GPs haven’t received the training required and are working off historical bias, the odd bit of additional training or conversations around the topic. The issues around medicine are ingrained after centuries of misogyny. To this day in the UK women do not need to be included in clinical trials (in the US it is now law that they must be included). This means our physiology is not considered. The most recent example of this is when the Covid vaccine was being rolled out. Women were reporting that it interfered with their menstrual cycle. This was because it hadn’t been tested on women. Other examples are contraception, the pill is essentially the same as it was decades ago, as are the risks. Treatments for menopause still carry risks even though they are low. Investment in research to support women’s health is tiny.  I am delighted to hear that the government is taking action, let’s face it, it’s long overdue. I would also like to see that some of the investment in medical research announced in the budget will be earmarked for women’s health. Rather than be saddened by the confirmation of misogyny, it would be great to celebrate real advancements in women’s health. It’s something we would all benefit from. Did you realise things were so one sided? https://lnkd.in/eeHPtBxY #Medicine #womenshealth #medicalresearch

What Longevity Really Looks Like ✨ Part 3: When “Feeling Off” Gets Dismissed In the conversations I’ve had with women in their 30s and 40s—many of them high-achieving, health-literate, and proactive—there’s a common thread that comes up before any diagnosis or intervention: “I just didn’t feel like myself.” They were sleeping less. They were more anxious. Their energy and mental clarity weren’t predictable anymore. And yet, when they sought answers, the response was often vague: → “Your labs look normal.” → “It’s probably stress.” → “This is just part of getting older.” But what these conversations reveal is something critical: Women’s early perimenopausal symptoms are too often dismissed—by providers, by systems, and even by themselves. And this matters for longevity. Because cognitive changes, mood shifts, sleep disruption aren’t just nuisances, they’re early markers of healthspan risk. If we’re serious about improving long-term outcomes for women, we need to start by validating the transition years: → Educating clinicians to recognize early hormonal shifts → Building tools that help women track and interpret changes → Offering interventions that address mental and cognitive health—not just physical symptoms Longevity isn’t just about living longer — it's about improving quality of life — especially in the decades when they’re told to just “push through. We need to design systems that take “feeling off” seriously. #Longevity #WomensHealth #Healthspan #Perimenopause