“Told to Calm Down While Their Bodies Break Down”

Imagine going to a doctor’s office, coming in for serious, ongoing, and worsening pain, only to be dismissed. For many women, this is a common experience, and even the norm. Within today’s modern medicine, women’s pain is still misunderstood and untreated. This is not abandonment from healthcare; it is a deeper reflection of stereotypes and biases. Until these systemic issues are resolved, women, especially of color, will continue to suffer and be overlooked.

The dismissal of pain in women is systematically worse for Black and Brown women due to intersecting oppressions and medical education bias. While all women face gender bias, research by Dayo, Christy, and Habte (2022) demonstrates that Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. This is not due to biological differences, but due to pain reports being delayed, disbelieved, or attributed to harmful stereotypes. 

Mercedes Wells told the nurse she was in active labor – as this was not her first child, she was familiar with the experience. However, the hospital sent her home anyway, discharging her without a physician ever examining her. Eight minutes later, she gave birth in the front seat of a truck on the side of a road with the help of her husband. When asked about the experience, Wells said, “Being turned away from the hospital was hurtful, disgraceful. I felt unheard. I felt ignored. I felt treated less than a human.” (Yancey-Bragg & Cuevas, 2025). This story goes towards the logical conclusion of a healthcare system that has spent centuries learning to ignore Black women’s pain.

Shumaker and Smith (1994) argued that the politics of women’s health are shaped by individuals who hold power in medical institutions and education. Today, that power remains predominantly white, male, and class-privileged. As a result, when a Black woman reports severe pain, her report is more likely to be documented as “non-specific” or “emotional” compared to an identical report from a white patient. Students are not regularly trained to recognize how their own biases can affect pain assessment. Until medical education explicitly teaches anti-racist, class-conscious pain assessment, and healthcare institutions audit their bias patterns and are held legally accountable for disparities, women of color will continue to suffer. 

Different types of oppressions affect how women are treated in healthcare. When women’s pain is ignored, it can make them feel like their experiences are not as important as others’, leading them to question if their pain is real or not, believing their pain does not matter, feeling like speaking up will not change anything or do anything differently, and lastly, the feeling of high anxiety and trusting doctors. Within multiple marginalized identities like black and brown women, these effects can be substantially worse. Research by Salomon (2024) shows that women are less likely to get proper pain treatment and are more likely to be seen as emotional or dramatic with their pain or feelings. This supports the idea that there is bias in healthcare, because the pain is evident and affects both temperament and how women feel about themselves, their pain, and their experiences. 

The common perception of women’s pain did not simply begin but was molded throughout centuries. The first report of common pain in women dates to ancient Greek times, during Hippocratic traditional practices. As mentioned by Yale School of Medicine (2024), women who reported symptoms that accompany heavy menstrual bleeding, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and infertility were diagnosed with “hysteria”. Medical physicians at that time claimed that women’s complaints derived from avoidance of completing their “womanly duties.“ The only “cure” was for women to find a husband, get married, and have children. This was clearly not the cure for women’s pain, which sadly left many women in agony with no physician looking to aid women’s health. Motivated stereotyping is often the cause of dismissing women’s pain. It is the refusal and lack of interest that diminishes the understanding that women experience painful emotional and physical experiences. Men downplay and invalidate women’s pain, with their motivation being the need to increase social and relational power. Motivated stereotyping only furthers the stigma that women over-dramatize their emotional and physical pain.  

The treatment women receive in healthcare is usually affected by bias, such as racism and sexism. Currently, women’s pain and suffering are still ignored throughout healthcare systems, which makes it unjust. Doctors sometimes label women’s symptoms as “emotional” or “all in their heads,” leading those women to believe that what they came for is unimportant (Patrick-Smith & Bull, 2024; Salomon et al., 2024). Due to this, many women end up getting the wrong form of treatment or have a diagnosis delay, which can make their health problems worse over time. Even when caregivers are ignorant of their actions, gender biases and prejudices have a powerful influence. When intersectionality is taken into account, the problem becomes far more serious. For example, women of color are more likely to have their symptoms ignored because of racial and gender bias (Paganini et al., 2023). This shows that multiple efforts are needed to achieve equal healthcare. Better training for healthcare providers to identify and address their own biases is the first step toward improving this unfortunate situation. It also means encouraging more women to participate in medical research and, most importantly, listening to what patients have to say about their condition. Women will continue to be treated unfairly until such improvements are enforced. 

The evidence is clear: women’s pain is systematically ignored in modern medicine. For women of color, the harm is much greater. The dismissal of women’s pain is a failure that has been experienced by women globally. Untreated conditions, maternal mortality rates, and delayed diagnoses cause life-changing consequences. As a society, they must be dismantled through accountability, advocacy, and action. We must strive to see a day when women are not told to calm down. Women should not have to prove their pain is real, and should be able to trust they are receiving equitable, thorough, and representative care.

References: 

Backman, I. (2024). From hysteria to empowerment. Yale Medicine.

https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/from-hysteria-to-empowe rment/

Dayo, E., Christy, K., & Habte, R. (2022). Health in color: Black women, racism, and maternal health. The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, 17.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00225-3/fulltext

Paganini, G. A., et al. (2023). Women exaggerate, men downplay: Gendered endorsement of emotional dramatization stereotypes contributes to gender bias in pain expectations.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 109, 1–14.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2023.104520

Patrick-Smith, M., & Bull, S. (2024). Medical student perceptions of gender and pain: A systematic review of the literature. BMC Medicine, 22, Article 434.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-024-03660-0

Salomon, Y., Neter, E., Mishori, R., & Shacham, T. (2024). Sex bias in pain management decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(32), e2400673121.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400673121

Shumaker, S. A., & Smith, T. R. (1994). The politics of women’s health. Journal of Social Issues,

50, 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1994.tb01204.x

Yancey-Bragg, N., & Cuevas, E. (2025, November 25). A hospital discharged a woman in labor. This lawmaker wants change. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/11/25/maternal-health-care-law-propo sed/87464842007/