In proposing When Women Get Sick: An Empowering Approach for Getting the Support You Need for representation and publication, I was surprised that a few people asked me why I was focusing the book on women facing illness. Aside from the fact that the majority of people I have supported over the last 26 years have been women, I thought the answer was obvious, but some savvy agents and publishers raised the question, so I will spell it out!
The Fiscal Facts
We are very far from health equity in this country. That should come as a shock to nobody. The root of the problem is economic. Women are more likely than men to be unemployed, underemployed or under resourced. Women struggle with medical bills and debt at a higher incidence than men.
Women Are More Likely to be Uninsured
Most uninsured adults remain that way because the cost of coverage is too high. Many women do not have access to coverage through a job or a partner. One bright spot, if you can call it that, is that on average, because women have lower incomes than men they are more likely to qualify for Medicaid. However, during the Trump administration (2016-2020), there were significant cutbacks to Medicaid.
Women Need More Healthcare
Women need more healthcare than men over their lifetimes. Women are more likely to have chronic conditions, use prescription drugs and battle depression. Whether women have children or not, they interact with more medical professionals than men during their reproductive years.
Women Have Been Under-Researched
Women work harder than men to receive advice, diagnoses and treatments, even if they are well-insured. When they aren’t, it only gets worse. This likely stems from diverse sources, but one is assuredly a historical lack of women-centered medical research. Before 1993, women were left out of most clinical trials, and to this day there is all too much guesswork involved in how certain drugs and medical devices work for women.
Women's Pain and the Hysteria Myth
For eons, women have been branded hysterical and their pain has been dismissed. To crystallize the problem, one need look no further than the award-winning, widely downloaded podcast, The Retrievals. Hosted by Susan Burton, the podcast tells the stories of women who were reproductive endocrinology patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 2020. A nurse assigned to their egg retrieval procedures swapped saline in for the fentanyl to be used to alleviate the patients’ pain. Women were routinely manipulated and gaslighted into the belief that the extreme pain they expressed was either normal or exaggerated. Dr. Elizabeth Comen’s outstanding book, All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why it Matters Today expertly catalogues the history of women being misdiagnosed, maligned and dismissed.
Women’s health is having a moment, finally. From startups to powerful books to major journalists focusing their time and energy on the topic, I’m thrilled to be in the conversation and I hope to serve many women with information and support. If we were closer to gender health equity in this country, perhaps my book would bear a different title. But for now, let’s go!