For me, this is a story which intersects the way women are treated by American and Israeli hospitals and in general and in particular with respect to the stereotypical cultural concept of the “crazy cat lady”. They are all designed to belittle women and they all stem from the male’s misogyny which in American and Israeli hospitals is apparently adopted by female nurses. Yes, women can also be misogynistic because, I argue, they adopt without realising it male standards and cultural norms. The study I am referring to is titled: Sex bias in pain management decisions.
Design by Michael BroadThere is a remarkable story in the Daily Mail today based upon a study of discharge notes of more than 21,000 patients from Missouri and Israel. The Daily Mail headline is: “Women less likely to get correct treatment in ER because they are viewed as ‘hysterical and exaggerating’.”
For me, at heart, this is misogynistic behaviour from both men and women in American and Israeli hospitals. And I very much suspect that the same happens in many other countries. This is not an attack on America or Israel. It is a report of what is happening.
The conclusion of the study was that women who present to the emergency department at a hospital in these countries (A&E in the UK) are less likely to receive medications they require for their treatment compared to men because they are perceived as exaggerating their symptoms including pain. They are perceived as being hysterical it appears. And it seems that they aren’t listened to.
As I said at the beginning, I see this as linked to the crazy cat lady syndrome. Women are more sensitive than men. They’ve evolved I would argue to be more sensitive because they are more nurturing in raising the family’s children. It goes with the territory. It’s a fine and necessary quality. It should be praised. Well, it is praised often but it cuts both ways.
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New norm – female standards
If the world was based on female standards, women wouldn’t be perceived as being overly emotional and hysterical. There’d be perceived as the norm and men would be perceived as being insensitive and too cold. The problem described emanates from male standards and norms imposed by men on this planet. This makes women outsiders to a certain extent in terms of their emotional response. That’s my personal view. I welcome other views. I am very much for equality both in terms of human gender and in terms of the animal-human relationship.
Support the vulnerable
And I’m very supportive of vulnerable people and animals. All animals are vulnerable actually. Often women are placed in a vulnerable position. We must be sensitive towards the vulnerable in the interests of a fairer society. It is one reason why I dislike Donald Trump. 😎 I am sure many will hate me for saying that.
RELATED: Late Queen Elizabeth II considered Donald Trump “very rude”. Embarrassment for Trump.
Generalising
Obviously in this article I’m generalising because there are many men who are very sensitive and very much concerned with equalities and animal welfare. And there will be women who are insensitive and as mentioned misogynistic. But in general what is being stated and found in these hospitals is true.
The study
The co-author and doctor of the study, Alex Gileles-Hillel, of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, said: “Women are viewed as exaggerating or hysterical and men are viewed as more stoic when they complain of pain.”
This is evidence of sex bias in medicine says the Daily Mail. Women are less likely to be treated for a heart attack than men. Nurses downplay women’s pain. Women waited 30 more minutes for care on average. Nurses are 10% less likely to note women’s pain on forms. Women are less likely to get pain meds than men. Pretty terrible, right?
It seems that nurses perceive women patients’ pain as less intense and less deserving of prompt treatment.
Of course, pain is subjective which allows nurses to assess subjectively whether the patient is telling the truth or not. And it should be said that a lot of patients don’t tell the truth about their pain!
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, women are almost 20% less likely to receive pain medication even when they rate their pain as extremely high on a 1-10 scale.
Women are more stoic
In my experience, women can often be more stoic than men when it comes to pain and discomfort. In fact, in this study they found that women tended to score their pain slightly lower than men. I think women have adapted to be more stoic than men because they have to in order to survive in a man’s world.
The researchers found that women’s pain was generally overlooked and this had “troubling societal and medical implications.”
“Women with pain can be perceived as hysterical, emotional, complaining, not wanting to get better, malingerers, and fabricating the pain, as if it’s all in their head. Other studies showed that women with chronic pain are assigned psychological rather than somatic causes of their pain.”
Misogynistic women (nurses)
As I said, it’s a man’s world and it seems that this concept has rubbed off on female nurses in these hospitals. I am reasonably assuming that most nurses in these hospitals are female.
Women can exhibit misogynistic behaviour. Factors contributing to misogynistic behaviour in women might include internalised sexism. Women may adopt societal beliefs that devalue their own gender leading to self-hatred or bias against other women. And then you have social conditioning. Cultural norms and societal expectations may pressure women to conform to patriarchal standards, influencing their attitudes towards other women. You also have competition between women which might result in women expressing hostility towards others or undermine other women.
And some women may perpetuate stereotypes about femininity and masculinity, believing that certain behaviours or traits are more acceptable. I think is a great weakness in society. It almost seems completely ingrained and inherited. It appears to me that misogyny is inherited in the male and is in their DNA. On that basis is going to be almost impossible to eradicate it.
And it really is time that society got rid of the concept of the crazy cat lady. It’s entirely misogynistic and incorrect and belittling. Remarkably, other studies have referred to cat owners as tending to be more neurotic than dog owners who are more ostensibly stable.
The studies also indirectly and by inference belittle women who live with cats. It should be mentioned, lastly, that scientific studies are not always 100% accurate and further, sometimes the scientists who run the studies, who should be entirely objective and scientific, are in fact biased and subjective in their views. They sometimes have an agenda themselves which colours the results.
Study citation
Title: Sex bias in pain management decisions. Mika Guzikevits, Tom Gordon-Hecker, David Rekhtman, and Shoham Choshen-Hillel. Link: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2401331121.
