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Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
The Gender Bias You Haven't Heard Of: Why Women's Pain Is Often Dismissed
Gender bias shows up in the most unlikely of places. And one such surprising place is the doctor’s chamber.
In a special series titled ‘Health Gap’, the BBC is exploring how men and women experience their own health as well as the medical system in starkly different ways. Part of this intriguing series is this story about ‘pain bias’ that is rarely discussed in the public domain.
Both anecdotal and academic research show up the disturbing trend of the medical industry often ‘dismissing’ women’s pain; and even when not scorning them outright, treating women and men differently when they complain about pain. The reasons could be many – plain-old gender bias, a lack of women-focussed medical research or even actual physiological differences in the way pain is interpreted by men and women.
The story points out several studies to support its claim. One study found that women in emergency rooms are taken less seriously than men; worse, another found that women are more likely to be given anti-anxiety medications and “are more often written off as psychiatric patients” instead of administering tests to rule out physical conditions. All this despite weak evidence about the long-held assumption that women are faster to consult a doctor than men.
This could be potentially dangerous for hard-to-diagnose but painful diseases like endometriosis, or even appendicitis.
There is also the other side. Since oestrogen is known to alter the perception of pain, it means there are indeed differences in the way women experience pain. So treating women differently is not a bad idea per se, but the problem occurs because of a severe lack of research on what these differences are and how best to tweak treatment. This is again because the massive body of medical evidence collected over the years, including on pain, has all been focussed on and overseen by men and thus has an overwhelmingly male perspective.
Evidently, this is the wrong starting point to examine women’s pain.
