Gaslighting Women In Healthcare

In exam rooms, emergency departments, and hospital wards across the United States, women are being quietly silenced: their symptoms dismissed, their concerns trivialized, and their care delayed. This phenomenon, known as medical gaslighting, is a systemic crisis that not only underserves the women of America but puts their lives at risk.

From misdiagnoses of heart attacks to inadequate pain management, women are disproportionately subjected to dismissal and disbelief in healthcare settings. These patterns of neglect enable a dangerous cycle: delayed diagnoses, ineffective treatments, and avoidable suffering.

How Gaslighting in Healthcare Happens

Medical gaslighting happens when healthcare providers minimize or dismiss a patient’s symptoms, often attributing them to psychological causes like stress or hormones without further investigation. For women, gender disparities ensure this is alarmingly common.

Consider cardiology; while heart disease is the leading cause of death for women, research and diagnostic tools have historically centered on male physiology. Women’s heart attack symptoms, which often differ from the classic chest pain seen in men, are frequently misdiagnosed as anxiety or indigestion. This leaves women 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed during a heart attack, delaying critical, life-saving care.

Despite impacting up to 11% of women, accounts of sickness and pain during pregnancy has been minimized or dismissed by healthcare professionals for decades. Frequently attributing it to emotional or psychological causes, mothers suffering from severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy or hyperemesis gravidarum have experienced delayed diagnosis. This has left millions of women suffering from relentless vomiting, dehydration, and malnutrition, and requiring hospitalization, despite research supporting a genetic cause for HG and demonstrating the benefits of early intervention.

Pain management is another battleground. Studies show that women with acute pain wait significantly longer than men for treatment in ER rooms, and women experiencing chronic pain are more likely to be prescribed therapy or psychiatric evaluations instead of real, effective pain relief. These disparities are not merely anecdotal but rooted in systemic biases.

The Historical Roots of Medical Gaslighting

Medical gaslighting toward women comes from reliance on generalized medical practices, insufficient education on gender-specific healthcare, and deeply rooted stereotypes about women’s health. Many medical professionals still carry unconscious biases, frequently putting women’s symptoms down to hormonal changes or emotional stress rather than being addressed as legitimate medical issues.

Structural flaws in our healthcare system worsen these prejudices. Clinical trials have historically excluded women, leaving critical gaps in understanding how conditions manifest across genders. Even today, women represent only a fraction of participants in many studies, leading to more adverse drug reactions and less effective treatment protocols.

Medical education also plays a role. Training programs have traditionally prioritised male physiology, leaving providers underprepared to recognize or treat conditions that present differently in women, and even programs for women-focused disciplines like obstetrics frequently lack menopause training. This leads to pervasive knowledge gaps across essentially all specialties.

Building a Healthcare System That Listens

Ending medical gaslighting requires systemic reform, cultural change, and individual advocacy.

Medical schools must prioritize gender-specific medicine in training and practice. This includes integrating gender disparities into curricula and increasing funding for research on women’s health.

Without representation in research, our understanding of how conditions manifest differently in women will remain limited. Furthermore, women need greater representation in leadership to drive change in a field where only 25% of leadership positions are currently held by women.

On an individual level, women must recognize the validity of their symptoms and feel empowered to self-advocate. Women have every right to seek compassionate, evidence-based care and, if necessary, switch providers without guilt or hesitation. Practical steps like keeping logs of symptoms, asking direct questions, and seeking second opinions can help ensure concerns are taken seriously.

Collaborative care that integrates medical, psychological, and lifestyle factors through multidisciplinary care models can also reduce the likelihood of dismissal and offer more holistic support. Additionally, it fosters trust between patients and providers by acknowledging the interconnectedness of physical and emotional health.

With such care models in place, women are more likely to feel heard, encouraging them to actively manage their health.

We Must Hear to Women’s Voices

Medical gaslighting isn’t just a failure of compassion but a public health crisis. The consequences of dismissing women’s symptoms ripple far beyond individual patients. Delayed diagnoses result in more severe illness, increased healthcare costs, and preventable loss of life.

Healthcare has the power to either continue with these disparities or dismantle them. For providers, this means moving beyond outdated biases and centering care on listening, believing, and acting. For patients, it means advocating for the care they deserve. Women’s voices are worth hearing and essential to building a healthcare system that serves everyone.