Laura Newell: It’s time women get angry over deep-rooted health inequalities

Slinking into the GP surgery, I try to keep my voice as low as possible when the receptionist asks for my name, furtively assessing who might overhear it.

The room is full of people who have all turned their heads to stare at me, as the newcomer, and I’m sweating with shame — it’s as if everyone instinctively somehow knows I am here to have an Uncomfortable Conversation. I want the floor to swallow me whole.

Years of having my health concerns brushed off as “women’s troubles — all to be expected at your age”, or “try to stick it out for a few weeks if you can handle the pain and if it persists we’ll run some blood tests” have left me cripplingly anxious when visiting the doctor.

Once there, I guarantee I spend at least half of my allotted appointment time apologising for “bothering” the practitioner.

Sadly, I know I’m far from alone. In February this year, UK gender equality charity The Fawcett Society revealed research that said around a third of women were avoiding their doctor because of anxiety and embarrassment. Perhaps worse, two-thirds polled felt their health problems weren’t taken seriously and a third reported being forced to endure poor health because of their gender.

Women are being failed by systemic health inequalities — it’s a fact.

Still don’t believe me? The World Economic Forum has my back.

According to research they undertook with the McKinsey Health Institute, results of which were released just a few weeks ago, women are 10 per cent less likely than men to have their pain level assessed when they arrive at hospital, wait around half an hour longer than men to be seen by a doctor and are less likely to be given pain medication.

When it comes to diagnosis specifically of “women’s issues” versus “men’s issues”, based on US data between January 2019 and August 2022, eight in 10 women went without a menopause diagnosis, versus three in 10 men not diagnosed with erectile dysfunction; six in 10 women went without an endometriosis diagnosis, versus two in 10 men not diagnosed with benign prostatic hyperplasia (enlarged prostate).

The numbers linked with endometriosis paint a particularly grim picture of the health inequalities women suffer. It affects 10 per cent of women and girls of reproductive age but diagnosis can taken more than seven years — and even longer for black women.

Think it’s a problem only faced in other countries? Think again.

Australia’s own Heart Foundation CEO David Lloyd, highlighted the same concerns about endometriosis in his speech at a recent women’s heart health breakfast event here in Perth, also pointing to his own organisation’s findings that “heart disease in Australian women is currently under-recognised, under-diagnosed and under-researched”.

In fact, Heart Foundation research shows women are less likely to attend cardiac rehabilitation, less likely to take their medicine regularly, and also much less likely to undergo treatment for heart attack or angina (chest pain) in hospital compared to men.

Need more convincing? Well, OK, I can do this all day . . .

As World Menopause Day came and went last week — with too little fanfare — Menopause Friendly Australia released results of new research in association with Dove.

Shockingly, 55 per cent of the 1030 women aged 35-60 they polled said they had considered quitting their jobs, or taking time off, as a result of debilitating symptoms they experienced during perimenopause or menopause, yet only 6 per cent of companies had policies directly relating to the hormonal shift.

So how do we put this right? Well, a good start is to ensure that policy makers hear our concerns and money goes to the right places.

According to the World Economic Forum, in 2020 only 1 per cent of healthcare research and innovation was invested in female-specific conditions beyond oncology. Just 1 per cent.

Imagine if men had to put up with the daily pain of endometriosis? There’d be a $1 billion pledged by big business by the end of the week and we’d have a cure by Christmas.

So how do we get policy makers to listen?

Well it’s certainly not to slink around and apologise “for being a nuisance”.

Instead, as Mr Lloyd so wisely told his breakfast audience, “women need to get angry”. And, more than that, we need to be loud about it.