The American Healthcare System is Failing Women. Here’s Why.
Written by: Sydney Koth
Research Provided by: Bryan Sullivan
Reviewed by: Dr. Brittany Busse, Director of Velocity Women’s Care
Did you know that women under 65 are twice as likely as men to die after being hospitalized for a heart attack? Did you know that 80% of all autoimmune disease patients are women? Or that women are twice as likely as men to develop depression in their lifetime?
If you aren’t familiar with these statistics, you’re likely wondering: Why is this the case? Why do mortality and morbidity rates seem to be so much higher for women?
The answer isn’t because women generally lead unhealthier lives than men, or because they are simply more susceptible to illness. The answer is much more complicated and multi-faceted than that, and it lies buried beneath a long, heavy history of gender discrimination in the medical field.
For most of American history, women have been excluded from clinical research
Women have always been poorly represented among the subject samples chosen for clinical studies, but in 1977, their representation was actually lowered from merely being rare to being completely nonexistent when the FDA created a policy that excluded women of child-bearing age from participating in any medical trials. The FDA did not have malicious intent with this policy, they were simply reacting to a widely-held (though unfounded) belief in the medical field at the time that drug-testing on women might damage their reproductive systems, but nevertheless, women have been facing the repercussions of the FDA’s decision ever since.
Since doctors and scientists were either not interested in or not able to perform medical tests on women for much of American history, medical professionals still don’t know as much about women’s bodies as they do men’s. And as you might imagine, this lack of knowledge can result in quite a bit of danger for women who require medical care.
Disease symptoms commonly presented by women are considered “atypical” while men’s symptoms are “normal”
Since, for the most part, the only information medical professionals have regarding human disease symptoms and reactions to various treatments is based on their research of men alone, medical professionals have no choice but to apply what they’ve learned about men to both men and women alike. This is a problem, of course, because there are many cases in which women present disease symptoms differently or respond differently to treatment than men do.
For example:
When a man is about to have a heart attack, he is likely to feel the crushing chest pain that most people are taught to associate with heart attacks. Meanwhile, when a woman is about to have a heart attack, she is likely to have more “silent symptoms,” such as shortness of breath, fatigue, nausea, back or jaw pain, and heart palpitations.
When a man is about to have a stroke, he is likely to display the classic FAST (Face droop, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to Call Emergency Services) signs that most medical professionals are familiar with. But when a woman is about to have a stroke, she is more likely to present with a headache, generalized weakness, disorientation, fatigue, nausea/vomiting, or altered mental status.
Not only are women’s symptoms often different from men’s, but they are also not as widely known in many medical circles. Men’s symptoms have long been established as the overarching human “norm.” This results in delayed diagnoses and treatment for women, and an increased mortality rate, because most medical professionals, along with most of the general American population, are not familiar with the way women present disease. We are taught to look out for chest pain, not nausea, concerning a heart attack; we are taught to look out for face droop, not headaches, concerning a stroke.
Though the FDA’s 1977 policy excluding women from clinical trials was reversed back in 1993, symptoms that are completely par-for-the-course for women are still termed “atypical” and often go unrecognized by many in the medical community. This phenomenon is only one cog in the wheel of a broader notion in our society that men are the “default” gender and women are “the second sex,” to quote Simone de Beauvoir.
Women are thought to be “overly emotional,” and therefore their symptoms are not taken seriously
In addition to the fact that most people, including women themselves, are not able to identify women’s symptoms for certain deadly diseases, there is also a stereotype that exists in our culture that women are emotionally weak or even hysterical by nature, and this results in doctors not taking women’s pain as seriously as they do men’s. In a recent survey of 900 women, 94.4% of women aged 25-34 and 88% of women aged 18-24 reported feeling “ignored” or “dismissed” when they went seeking medical help.
Many women are told that they are just “overreacting” or experiencing “normal female hormones” when they voice their concerns or disease symptoms to their doctors. This sort of thing only compounds the rate at which women are left untreated for certain illnesses, including mental health issues like anxiety and depression.
The Velocity difference
We at Velocity created a Women’s Care division precisely because we know how frequently women are overlooked by traditional American healthcare systems.
Velocity Women’s Care is made for women, by women—because women deserve better than one-size-fits-all, men-oriented care. They deserve to meet with doctors who listen, understand, and support them.
Click here to learn more about Velocity Women’s Care.
Sources:
Mehta LS, Beckie TM, DeVon HA, et al. Acute myocardial infarction in women: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2016;133(9):916-947. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000351
Bushnell C, Chaturvedi S, Gage KR, et al. Sex differences in stroke: epidemiology, clinical presentation, medical care, and outcomes. Lancet Neurol. 2018;17(7):641-654. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30201-9
Fairweather D, Frisancho-Kiss S, Rose NR. Sex differences in autoimmune disease from a pathological perspective. Am J Pathol. 2008;173(3):600-609. doi:10.2353/ajpath.2008.071008
Martin LA, Neighbors HW, Griffith DM. The experience of symptoms of depression in men vs women: analysis of the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. JAMA Psychiatry. 2013;70(10):1100-1106. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.1985
