Inequalities in the care of women in the health sector.

Gender inequalities in medicine have always had very real consequences for women’s health. Several studies show that women receive less responsive care than men, particularly for cardiovascular diseases and pain management. This lesser medical consideration contributes to avoidable excess female mortality.

First of all, the pain carried by an individual is subjective and only the one who feels it is best placed. Yet doctors tend to trust men more than women. Thus , men’s pain is perceived as more serious. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted in June 2024 in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine by researchers at the University of Montpellier. They brought together 1,563 doctors/nurses who had to assess the severity of patients’ chest pain. They also had the patients’ medical histories, the only difference being gender, whether women or men. However, 62% of caregivers considered the case to be serious when it was a man compared to 49% when it was a woman. In addition, the pain expressed on a scale of 0 to 10 had an average of 5.4 for women compared to 6 for men. This has real consequences for women because it shows how they are treated in emergency rooms, creating longer waits and longer periods of medication.