Pain and Prejudice: How the Medical System Ignores Women—and What We Can Do About It

Journalist Jackson debuts with a powerful account of the sexism cooked into medical care. Her own experience with endometriosis, “a chronic inflammatory disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus... grows in other parts of the body,” is central, and she reports that it and other diseases that affect mainly women are understudied and often go undiagnosed. Because of this, she reports, women’s pain is more likely to be ignored by the medical system than men’s. Further, she writes that despite the good intentions of many doctors, sexism exists in medicine because health care plays a role in policing women (health care as an institution ensures doctors maintain control over women’s reproductive systems, for example, via such means as birth control). To bolster her case, Jackson gives a historical overview of how ailing women came to be viewed as “hysterical” in ancient Greece, and brings things up to the present with the observation that, when pain is ignored, “and when we get angry about it, we’re diagnosed with mental illnesses.” This is less a step-by-step guide to fixing the problem than a passionate survey that will motivate readers to advocate for themselves. With its wealth of information, this hits the mark. (Mar.)