“It made her feel ashamed that she was having sex at 70. Three days later,she turned up to hospital with a ruptured appendix.”
Kearney,who has been focusing on women’s health,hears stories like that often. “Overweight women who just get told they’re fat and to lose weight when they have health issues;endometriosis or chronic back pain,where women are just dismissed. And it’s just a woman’s lot,” she said.
But it’s one she wants to change. The government will convene its first National Women’s Health Summit next Thursday,at which it will release the results of a nation-first gender bias survey that has asked almost 3000 Australian women,health professionals and stakeholder groups about women’s experience of the health system.
The survey results have come up wanting:two in three women said they had experienced bias and discrimination in healthcare,particularly when it came to sexual and reproductive health.
Women described being stereotyped as hysterical or as drama queens,or made to feel they were a waste of time. They said their symptoms or pain were often wrongly attributed to their period or lifestyle factors. Some recalled being sent home with paracetamol or a hot water bottle.
For more than 70 per cent of women,this experience had happened during a GP visit. Almost half reported bias in hospital settings.
The consequences included feelings of abandonment,shame,blame and self-doubt. But they could also include delayed diagnosis and treatments,leading to disease progression and worse health outcomes.