"It is past time for women's health to move beyond "boobs and tubes" - as one expert termed the field's reproductive focus - to address the disparities and prejudice that have hindered medical providers from effectively treating more than half of the population. That's according to experts who gathered for a symposium held recently at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study examining persistent gaps between men's and women's healthcare."
"Comen, who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 2004 and Harvard College in 2000, reviewed the history of how the medical system has discounted women's health concerns. It partly stems from the fact that historically doctors were male and viewed what was normal and abnormal through the lens of the male body. Women were viewed as emotional to the extent that female "hysteria" was in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1980,"
Healthcare often focuses on reproductive health while neglecting other critical women's health issues. Women have twice the risk of Alzheimer's disease compared with men. Common heart attack symptoms in women, such as jaw pain and indigestion, are labeled 'atypical' despite heart disease being the leading cause of death among women. Medical education has taught women's chest pain is 'atypical' even though women make up more than half of the population. Historical male-dominated medicine defined normalcy through the male body and pathologized women as emotional, including the diagnosis of 'hysteria' until 1980.
Read at Harvard Gazette
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