Medical Misogyny

Zoe Wainer, Gabrielle Jackson
Red female symbol with a stethoscope creates a heart shape against a blue sky background.
  • Talks and Ideas
  • all about women
  • 60 minutes Subject to change
  • Suitable for all ages

Women’s pain isn’t “mysterious”. Medicine is failing us.

From emergency rooms to GP clinics, pain and other symptoms experienced by women have been discounted or dismissed. Why does modern medicine keep getting this wrong and what can we do about it?

For centuries, women’s symptoms have been misunderstood, minimised or dismissed, from wandering wombs and so-called “hysteria” to modern-day misdiagnosis, mistreatment and delayed care.

Medical science made extraordinary advances in the 20th and 21st centuries, but gender bias remains stubbornly embedded in healthcare, from a body of scientific research based largely on male experience, to a medical culture that can still see women dismissed or even belittled.

An increasing body of testimony shows how dangerous this is for women — particularly First Nations women, women of colour and gender-diverse people — with poorer health outcomes across cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive and autoimmune conditions.

Against this backdrop, studies like Australia’s first-ever Inquiry into Women’s Pain — drawing on the lived experiences of more than 13,000 women, girls, carers, healthcare professionals, peak bodies and researchers — point to the urgent need for reform.

Join this expert panel as they put medical misogyny under the microscope and, crucially, map out what meaningful change could finally look like.

Sydney Opera House Presents

Event details

In medicine, man is the default human being (and) any deviation is atypical, abnormal, deficient.

Gabrielle Jackson

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all about the speakers

Zoe Wainer (she/her)

Dr Zoe Wainer is an experienced health system leader with a distinguished career spanning clinical practice, public health, governance and health system innovation. She has held senior executive roles, including Director of Clinical Governance and Head of Public Health at Bupa Australia and New Zealand, and has served as Chair of the Board of Dental Health Services Victoria.

Headshot of Zoe Wainer

Gabrielle Jackson (she/her)

Moderator

Gabrielle Jackson is the deputy editor of Guardian Australia, where she has worked since 2014. She is the author of Pain and Prejudice: How the Medical System Ignores Women and What We Can Do About It, which has been published in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada and China. She won the 2016 National Medicinewise Award for her reporting on endometriosis.

Headshot of Gabrielle Jackson

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