Women are not second-class citizens: medical misogyny must end

Women have struggled through history to be treated as the equal of men. Everything has had to be fought for, from being allowed to vote to being allowed to take part in the workforce. The Herald this weekend publishes the first articles in a wide-reaching investigation into medical misogyny.

This is an area of bias that can damage, indeed, play a debilitating part in the life of women. Treating one human differently in their seeking of care and treatment, both physically and mentally, is shameful.

The articles paint a damning picture of what women have to endure. This ingrained systemic bias is individual-based, medical process-based and government-based.

More than 1800 women shared their experiences with us; there were more than 1500 accounts of misdiagnosis or delayed diagnoses.

The common thread in the responses is this: because of their gender, they were not treated seriously. There was, and remains, a deafness and blindness to a situation having a pernicious impact on women. These shortcomings have led to life-threatening, and/or life-changing consequences.

This lack of awareness can be seen in the pledge by the major parties to increase Medicare payments to GPs.

The Labor government recently unveiled an $8.5 billion plan, which was matched by the Coalition, that city appointments of between 20 and 39 minutes would get a 38 per cent funding boost; shorter consultations would get a 62 per cent boost. This imbalance weighs against women. It needs to be righted.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Michael Wright rightly says women need to be able to spend more time with their GP and to not be disadvantaged because of that.

The Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners want the federal government to commit an extra $1 billion annually to allow for longer consultations. We support their call.

It would be wrong to see this investigation as an attack on doctors or other professionals working, as they do, so hard for their patients. It is about looking at the problems in the outcomes for women and asking what role the system, from top to bottom, is playing.

Two years ago, medical journal The Lancet commissioned a report “Women, cancer and power”, which found that 2.3 million cancer deaths in women each year could have been prevented with equitable access to care, improvements in diagnosis and primary prevention strategies.

This state of affairs was pervasive across both genders treating the women. Dr Ophira Ginsburg, project lead, said: “So much of the time, terrible discrimination, not being believed, being under-treated or turned away from the emergency room, the people responsible are women, [which] speaks to the patriarchal system [and] implicit, unconscious bias.”

Ginsburg’s last point goes to the heart of the matter. A system built on patriarchy cannot, of and by its nature, give equal rights and service to all of the population. To do nothing is to acquiesce to the abhorrent view, and practice, that women are merely “smaller men”.

Change must start now.

Bevan Shields sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.