Medical misogyny

Advertisement
Polycystic ovary syndrome is believed to be the most common endocrine condition in women of reproductive age, affecting between 6 and 13 per cent.

A doctor said I was ‘too skinny’ to have PCOS. Five years later, I received a diagnosis

Despite having many symptoms associated with polycystic ovary syndrome, the absence of one left me in limbo for too long.

  • Hannah Bambra

Latest

Fatima was left for hours in extreme pain awaiting treatment. She almost lost her ovary

Complex medical cases are being missed in Australia’s emergency departments, resulting in agonising pain, traumatising surgeries and infertility.

  • Carrie Fellner

‘Treated like a hysterical mother’: Assaulted by her son, Alison’s pain was ignored until she collapsed

Alison Beatty was sent away from Katoomba Hospital’s emergency department but, as it turned out, her lungs were filling with blood.

  • Charlotte Grieve
Women tell their stories of medical misogyny. "I was just desperate to be OK, to have my life back and find out that I wasn't crazy."
Video icon2:02

Heartbreaking search for answers and treatment

Women tell their stories of medical misogyny. "I was just desperate to be OK, to have my life back and find out that I wasn't crazy."

More than a thousand women have shared their disturbing encounters with the medical system as part of an investigation into medical misogyny.

Ignored and dismissed, women raise voices against medical misogyny

Our series on medical misogyny has promoted wider awareness. But the voices of women telling their stories shows more needs to be done to hasten an end to the health system’s deeply embedded gender bias.

  • The Age's View
Kate Burns and Abigail Rodwell.

Gaslit, dismissed and treated as hypochondriacs: The gender divide in iron deficiency

Ignored by doctors for years, Abigail almost died, with one doctor in the end saying she had the blood count of a shark attack or car crash victim.

  • Kate Aubusson
Advertisement
Belinda Clarke, 46, found her PTSD compounded by three traumatic births and two life-threatening health conditions in quick succession.

The hidden cost of being diagnosed with a condition men can’t get

A new report has found dramatically higher rates of mental illness among women with endometriosis, gynaecological cancers and birth trauma.

  • Kate Aubusson
Premier Jacinta Allan had heavy and drawn-out periods as a young person, later diagnosed as endometriosis.

‘Wild with rage’: It took Jacinta Allan more than a decade to learn the source of her pain

Women who have sought help over years for a condition more common than diabetes say they have felt gaslit and disbelieved, and live in excruciating pain. Jacinta Allan is among the 1 million Australians hoping for better.

  • Wendy Tuohy
Lilli Staff was told her debilitating pelvic pain was normal.

Why women deserve to be treated seriously when they are in pain

“First, do no harm” has long been a guiding principle of medicine. What if instead it was, “first, listen to the patient”?

  • The Herald's View
Lilli Staff at her home about a year and a half after undergoing stenting to treat her chronic pelvic pain.

‘I was alive but not living’: The chance discovery that saved Lilli chronic pelvic pain

“What did you do to me?” How a surgeon stumbled upon a treatment for her patient’s long-dismissed pain.

  • Kate Aubusson