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By Angela Stoehr
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Women’s health research is gaining attention, but progress means little if patients still cannot get their pain taken seriously. As a gynecologist specializing in complex pelvic pain, I have seen how deeply medicine fails women when it treats suffering as normal.
We must stop encouraging women to endure pain, demand better research and training, and hold healthcare systems accountable for delivering answers. Otherwise, preventable suffering will continue to damage lives, families, and public health.
Women make up nearly 50 percent of the global population, yet generations have learned to minimize their symptoms, push through exhaustion, and accept painful periods, painful sex, and debilitating menopause symptoms as inevitable. That conditioning does not stay inside the home. It shapes what patients report, what doctors investigate, and which health problems receive research funding.
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I see the consequences in pelvic pain care. A teenager suffering from severe endometriosis once came to me with her mother, who revealed that she had passed out from heavy periods as a young woman. She never sought help because she believed the suffering was normal. Only when her daughter experienced similarly severe symptoms did she recognize that neither should have had to endure them.
This is how silence becomes hereditary. Women teach their daughters to tolerate what they themselves were taught to tolerate. Meanwhile, clinicians may mistake a patient’s ability to function through pain for evidence that the problem is manageable.
The problem is not always a lack of compassion from individual clinicians. Medicine itself has significant gaps. Complex conditions affecting women have historically received less attention, less training, and less investment than many conditions affecting men. When providers are not equipped with the right tools, they may unintentionally dismiss patients or focus only on the most familiar solutions. A complex puzzle cannot be solved if clinicians are given only one tool.
The investment gap reflects this larger failure. According to the World Economic Forum, women’s health receives just 6 percent of private healthcare investment. Despite women representing nearly half the world’s population, many conditions that profoundly affect women remain underfunded and understudied. We cannot say women’s health is a priority while continuing to invest so little in understanding and treating the problems that affect them.
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Women Deserve an Informed Conversation
The same pattern appears in menopause care. A man experiencing erectile dysfunction in his 50s is often told, “We can help you.” A woman experiencing severe hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, and disrupted sleep is too often told, “That is just part of aging.” Common does not mean acceptable.
Untreated menopause symptoms can affect sleep, mental health, relationships, work, and long-term wellness. Women deserve informed conversations about their options, including the potential benefits and risks of hormone therapy, rather than fear and outdated assumptions preventing them from receiving appropriate care.
This issue extends beyond gynecology. Heart disease remains a leading cause of death among women, yet women may experience symptoms differently than men. When women are conditioned to ignore warning signs and healthcare systems fail to recognize those differences, the consequences can be devastating.
But the future does not have to look this way.
Imagine a healthcare system where a woman reporting pain receives curiosity instead of skepticism. Imagine research priorities that focus not only on what is profitable, but also on what makes women suffer. Imagine daughters growing up in a world where their mothers do not pass down stories of silent endurance, but instead teach them that their symptoms deserve attention.
That future requires action.
Women: stop asking only whether a symptom is “normal.” Ask whether it is affecting your life, and seek answers. Doctors: treat common symptoms as the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one. If you do not have the expertise to address complex conditions, refer patients to someone who does. Healthcare systems, insurers, and investors must stop using women’s ability to endure as justification for delaying care and limiting resources.
I entered medicine because I wanted to help people. I believe most healthcare professionals share that mission. But good intentions are not enough when the system itself creates barriers to listening and healing.
The standard of women’s health should never be how much pain a woman can quietly survive. It should be how effectively medicine can understand her pain, treat it, and help her live fully.
Dr. Angela “Angie” Stoehr, MD, FACOG, is a gynecologist specializing in chronic pelvic pain, sexual dysfunction, and complex women’s health conditions. The views expressed are the author's own.
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