Australia cannot afford to ignore these 1100 – or 13.4 million – women

Over the past month, the Herald has heard from more than 1100 women with experiences of what they believe was misogyny in Australia’s healthcare system.

The survey, published yesterday, comes after the nation’s Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney also sought submissions on the subject, convening a National Women’s Health Advisory Council to advise the government on how to acknowledge and address medical misogyny.

As the Herald wrote alongside our initial coverage of the issue, earlier this month: medical misogyny condemns half the population to poor treatment.

But tackling medical misogyny, the breadth and severity of women’s experience revealed in yesterday’s survey has revealed, is about more than that. It is about ensuring the wellbeing of a population Australia cannot afford to lose.

Take the onset of menopause, a recurring theme in women’s stories of medical misogyny.

The average woman reaches menopause aged 51. In 1980, fewer than half of 51-year-old women were in paid employment, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Labour Force data.

But by 2020, the proportion of 51-year-old women in the workforce had reached more than three-quarters and women’s workplace participation rates had only dwindled to 1980 levels by the age of 64. (At which age, in 1980, only 10 per cent of women worked.)

Hundreds of thousands of women now remain in the workforce managing menopausal symptoms. Or, with symptoms dismissed as menopause which are actually something else: one submission to the Herald’s survey came from a woman who had felt unwell for years, her symptoms dismissed as menopause and stress. Eventually, a lung specialist uncovered a 3cm tumour on her adrenal gland.

Putting aside concerns of humanity, it is terrible for the nation’s productivity if these women – and women of all ages – cannot access adequate healthcare. Extra sick days, poor performance and eventual withdrawal from the workforce are all likely outcomes for the women suffering in silence.

The National Women’s Health Advisory Council will undertake an audit of the Medicare rebate system next year to investigate why rebates are higher for procedures for men, such as scrotal ultrasounds, than they are for procedures for women, such as internal ultrasounds.

On Thursday, three weeks after the launch of this masthead’s campaign, the federal government pledged an additional $550,000 in funding for the council.

This is important work and it is probably not lost on the Albanese government that tackling medical misogyny is quite popular work, given the broad electorate it affects.

Tiers of government, professional bodies and regulators, must work together to create real change. It is good that the federal government wants to examine gendered disparity in the Medicare rebate system but what about differences in how women and men are treated in – state-managed – emergency departments? One survey respondent reported no longer trusting hospitals after having an ectopic pregnancy missed for 11 weeks.

Eleven weeks lost by one of the 1100 – if not 111,000 or, indeed, 13.41 million – who Australia cannot afford to lose.

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