For years, there have been news stories and studies on how women struggle to be believed and taken seriously by many medical professionals.[1]
While those news stories and studies are important (do a search on Google for “women not listened to by doctors”, and you’ll find lots of material), it’s also important to hear from people like fellow blogger Carla at Things Carla Loves. By hearing from people like her, I hope we can further recognize the immense damage that’s done because women often struggle to be believed by many people in the medical profession.
Therefore, I’m sharing her post on the topic of women not being believed by doctors. I definitely recommend reading this post (and her blog in general), as her experiences are sadly similar to the experiences of many women I know when it comes to not being believed by medical professionals. Her post is especially appropriate considering the upcoming International Woman’s Day; the day’s theme, which focuses on on gender balance (called #BalanceforBetter), should definitely include balance with how seriously doctors take both male and female patients.
Post: “#ButDon’tYouWantToGetBetter: Women, Doctors, and the Lack of Diagnosis”
Blind Injustice 
I accidentally deleted the comment you left about intrusive thoughts but I just wanted to say yes…totally agree with you that there’s way too much stigma
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No worries. And yes, there is too much stigma. I look forward to playing a more active role in helping to break that stigma; this will happen soon.
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That’s good
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This drives me nuts! Thank you for sharing. Although I had a wonderful male pediatrician and a great male dentist, I’m exclusively seeing women for my medical care now. I started to become uncomfortable with my male OB/GYN in high school. I had to go on the Pill when I was 12 due to my periods. I’ve always related better with women. I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder in the summer of 2015 by a female counselor / therapist. I’m not sure if I would have been believed if I had seen a male counselor / therapist. There are so many others out there who struggle with chronic pain and other “invisible” illnesses. and every one deserved to be heard and understood. No one should be judgmental, especially not the medical professionals that we are supposed to trust.
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Agreed, Laura. Everybody deserves to be believed when it comes to their health, and we really need to change the fact that women are often not believed.
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Brendan, you probably know that I’m very interested in this subject seeing that I’ve experienced more doctors not taking me seriously than those who do. I’m going over to the other blog to read the post. Thanks for bringing attention to this important matter.
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I’m glad you read the blog post that Carla wrote! I’ve become increasingly interested in the subject, as I’ve heard of more women (including friends and family) not believed by doctors.
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Based on my experience, some of the disregard is due to the ignorance of staff. When they don’t know what to do, or how to diagnose, they choose to give a blunt statement or ignore all together. For others, it’s their own personal biases. The combination essentially means that women are not receiving effective healthcare.
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And what you describe seems to be the experiences of many of the women in my life as well. So much of what goes on is out of ignorance.
Another thing I find interesting is that it doesn’t seem to matter what sort of health care system it is (the American one where private entities rule the system, the public-private combo of Australia, or single-payer)–this is still a problem. Now I personally favor single-payer, but this issue seems to transcend health care systems.
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