It’s a man’s world – and it’s bad for our health

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If you’ve not seen the viral video ‘Female Body’ by Canadian musical comic Farideh, go and watch it right now. It’s a hilarious, honest and heartbreaking look at how women are often dismissed by their doctors – and an absolute banger.

Farideh says she was inspired to write it after struggling to get a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) for 10 years. “I was told I was making it up or I’d just put on a lot of weight because I was fat,” she says. But an incident with her husband in their local A&E made her even more determined to write the song.

“He was struggling to lift up his hand or walk up the stairs, which was really weird, so I thought we should take him to the ER,” she says. “But I started to prepare for that trip like he was a woman – I was saying ‘They’re probably not going to believe you’ and ‘You’re going to have to assert yourself’ but the complete opposite happened.

“He walked into that ER, and it was like he was Beyoncé! The nurses rushed over to help him. The doctors were like ‘We’re going to run this test, and we’re going to run that test’. No one thought he was making it up. No one thought he was being silly. No one told him he was just anxious because he was a busy dad. And it made me realise no woman on earth would get the same treatment.”

The heart of the matter

Luckily, Farideh’s husband was fine, and she ended up creating an anthem for all unheard women across the globe. And that’s a lot of women; even though it’s 2025 we are still getting the short end of the stick when it comes to our health.

The publication of Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, six years ago, shocked people with its data-backed exposé of how medical research, doctors’ opinions, getting a diagnosis and a whole lot more are stacked against women’s health – it only become law that women must be included in clinical trials, including drug tests, in America in 1993.

One of the most shocking realisations for many of us is that men and women have different symptoms during a heart attack. While men might show up with agonising chest and arm pain, women are more likely to have stomach pain, nausea, breathlessness and fatigue. Women do get chest pain but it’s not so obvious and may be just one of their symptoms.

The result is we’re more likely to be misdiagnosed, so vital treatment is delayed and our chances of successful recovery are dramatically reduced. In fact, women are up to three times more likely to die following a heart attack thanks to unequal medical treatment. But since this research was revealed, things have got better – right?

Melanie Evans*, a physiotherapist, says, “I work in a multidisciplinary practice. One day, a man came in to see the GP complaining of bad indigestion and arm pain. He got a full cardiac workup that day, which included blood tests, an ECG, X-rays and an ultrasound of his heart.

“A week later, his wife came in complaining of indigestion, arm pain and generally feeling unwell, but she was also feeling quite anxious. The GP dismissed her symptoms as mental health issues and gave her antidepressants. She died three weeks later after suffering a massive heart attack.”

Pain and pleasure

Even getting a prescription for simple painkillers can be a problem if you’re a woman. A recent study found doctors and other healthcare staff frequently underestimate women’s pain, believing women are oversensitive to pain or will exaggerate how much pain they’re in. This means they often ‘under-treat’ it, either prescribing low-dose painkillers or offering women psychological treatments instead.

But at least doctors are happy to prescribe us the contraceptive pill. The only downside to all that sexual freedom is the lone responsibility of taking it every day and a long list of potential side-effects including acne, weight gain, anxiety and depression. However, a male contraceptive pill may finally be on the horizon.

Scientists say the new pill has just been declared safe in clinical trials. Safe, presumably, because it has no side-effects such as weight gain, mood swings and changes in libido. So, it was fine for women to suffer all those side-effects for decades – and to keep experiencing them – but men couldn’t possibly be expected to do the same? Or is our pill bad for our health? It’s an unsolvable mystery.

If you’re not convinced that women’s health isn’t as thoroughly researched or well-funded as men’s, how about the fact there have been approximately 32,000 published studies about erectile dysfunction and, up until 2018, fewer than 3,000 on both premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD)?

Or that start-ups focusing on erectile dysfunction attracted around $1.24 billion of funding from 2019 to 2023, but those focused on endometriosis only received $44 million in the same time frame? FYI, it still takes nearly nine years for women in the UK to get a diagnosis of endometriosis.

Erectile dysfunction can be traumatic, but the amount of time, money and effort devoted to studying something that only 19% of men will experience compared to PMS, which affects 90% of women at some point in their lives, feels laughably out of proportion.

The fight for information

One of the best ways to keep pushing for better medical treatment is to arm yourself with the facts and present them to your GP. But where do you find the facts? There are a huge number of resources available, but you might not even be aware they exist.

Research by CensHERship, the campaign to tackle social media censorship of women’s health and sexual wellbeing content, found 95 per cent of women’s health creators experienced some form of censorship in the last year on sites including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Clio Wood, co-founder of CensHERship, explains that posts about vaginal cancer, for example, have been banned because they contain the word vagina, which is seen as explicit content by the platforms. “But you don’t see a lot of actual explicit content using the word vagina,” she says. “I know the word ‘pussy’ is used and pussy and vagina might refer to the same thing, but the context is absolutely key here.”

In another example, a Spanish breast-feeding support app not only had their ads banned but their entire YouTube channel of advice and support taken down because it was deemed to be sexual content. But ads for Playboy, which did feature naked breasts in clearly sexual content, were approved. “The only difference we can see is that one is for a female audience and one is for the male gaze,” says Clio.

Advantage women

It’s not all bad news for women’s health, though. There are a number of conditions where we are taken more seriously than men with the same symptoms. Dr Dawn Harper, Embarrassing Bodies presenter and author of Live Well to 101, says, “Osteoporosis is one – any older woman who comes in with a fractured hip or wrist is now given a bone density scan, but we may not routinely offer one to a man.”

Autoimmune conditions are also more common in women, so, according to Dr Harper, “We might be more aware of looking for things like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis in a woman presenting with fatigue and joint pain, but we wouldn’t be so quick to think of them as a possible diagnosis in men.”

More women tend to be diagnosed with depression than men, but this isn’t because women are naturally predisposed towards depressive illnesses. Dr Harper says, “Women will often be more tearful, lose motivation or confidence, or withdraw – all classic symptoms we might expect to see in somebody’s who’d depressed.

“However, a man with depression might be more prone to outbursts of aggression, risky behaviours like gambling or drinking, or becoming obsessed with a new hobby to distract him from real life. If his GP isn’t aware that those are also signs of depression, he could go under the radar.”

Women are generally better at talking to healthcare professionals, too. We are much more used to seeing our GP to get contraception, get a smear test or register our children (if we have them). “We have an ongoing relationship with our doctor, so it’s not that intimidating to talk to them about any new health issues,” says Dr Harper.

But a lot of men may only need medical help if they get injured doing sports or have an accident – even then, this will only get them to A&E. Dr Harper says, “I’ve known adult men who were still registered with their childhood GP! If they don’t have a relationship with their doctor, it makes it a lot harder to bring up any health worries. So, in that respect, I think women do get a better deal when it comes to our health.”

Close the gender health gap

It may be a while before there are enough comprehensive studies done on women’s health, for that information to be taught in medical schools and then passed on to practicing healthcare professionals. But it will happen.

As long as people like Farideh and Clio keep raising the issue – both in different but equally effective ways – the gender health gap will get smaller. Until then, if your GP tells you to lose weight for a headache or do some meditation for endometriosis, you could just show them this article…

* Names changed for privacy