Breaking Bias: Gender Inequality in Healthcare

How gender bias affects diagnosis and treatment, and what people are doing to fix it

Despite advances in equality in healthcare, gender bias remains a large issue. This leads to misdiagnosis, unequal treatment, and overlooked symptoms - especially for women and non - binary individuals. However, there is a growing group of researchers and activists who are trying to address this issue, and people are pushing for a brighter future where medical care is truly equal and fair. 

Gender bias doesn't just include individual medical professionals. It's deeply engraved in the entire medical world. It's embedded in medical studies, clinical trials, and everyday practices. Discrepancies in medical studies between male and female bodies cause delayed diagnosis, ignored symptoms, and overall poor health outcomes for women. However, awareness has risen, and people are fighting to make a change. These people are fighting for more inclusive clinical research, more education on this deeply rooted bias, and to build a healthcare system that respects and listens to all genders. 

According to an article from BBC News, a woman named Nadiah Akbar was once told that her extreme fatigue was just caused by her being a “busy mother.” In spite of this, Akbar pursued further medical testing, and, eventually, she was informed that what she was experiencing was actually thyroid cancer.

(Photograph: BBC News)

Nadiah wouldn't have even received these results if she weren't constantly advocating for herself. She told BBC that, “it takes a lot of energy for you to keep advocating for yourself, and that’s the part that’s worrying - a lot of people just stop.” The same article included statistics from an Australian research study that showed how females admitted to the hospital because of a heart attack were half as likely to get proper treatment as men. It also showed that these women died twice the rate 6 months after discharge. For the same emergency, you should get the same treatment. 

According to NACE Law Group, women are 66% more likely to receive a misdiagnosis than men. This unfair treatment leads to about 800,000 deaths or life-altering disabilities annually. Of course, medical errors can happen to everyone. From 1977 to 1986, It was strictly against FDA policy to include women around childbearing age in trials. So women from ages 12 - 51 were being denied representation and research. This policy was banned in the early 1990s, but since so many medications and symptoms had been tested on men, they didn't have the correct medications for women. This resulted in inaccurate assumptions, incorrect dosages, and a bad understanding of how diseases will affect women. According to AWIS, from 1950 to 1960, there was a period of time when doctors would prescribe thalidomide for morning sickness. It was prescribed to women in 46 different countries. This caused birth defects and infant deaths. Approximately 15-20,000 babies were affected worldwide, with around 40-50% dying shortly after birth. This not only affected the fetus, but it could also cause severe nerve damage to the mother. The medical name of this damage is peripheral neuritis. Sources even call it the “biggest anthropogenic medical disaster ever.” 

So, what are people doing now to address these issues? There are many organizations and nonprofits that are raising awareness and money; one such group is Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM). WHAM is dedicated to addressing funding gaps, collaborating with scientists, and raising money to do both of these things. WHAM and Klynveld, Peat, Marwick, and Goerdeler (KPMG) recently announced a $1.1 million partnership to “revolutionize” women's health. With this money, they will be conducting more studies on autoimmune disease, brain health, cancer, and heart health. They are doing this because all of these studies were primarily designed for and tested on men. In 2025, they launched a research project to study women's bone and muscle health, endometriosis, PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), menopause, etc. These studies have the potential to help and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women. 

There are also lots of women taking matters into their own hands. Liz Powell founded the organization Women's Health Advocates, having raised over 550 million dollars for her organization, and is constantly fighting to break the bias in healthcare. Since the company was founded (2007), the number of  studies for women in healthcare have raised 11%. This might seem small, but think about all the women who have been affected for the better. 

(Photograph: HealthyWomen)

Journalist Maya Duesenberry’s recently released book titled “Doing Harm,” covers the deeply rooted sexism in the medical world. Duesenberry was inspired to write the book because of the bias she personally experienced throughout her battle with rheumatoid arthritis (an autoimmune disease). When she first started displaying symptoms of the disease and telling her doctors about this, she was ignored and told that she was exaggerating.

(Photograph: Mother Jones)

Eventually, after heavily advocating for herself, she was taken seriously and received treatment. Maya wanted to share her story to bring awareness to this very serious topic. Not only does she talk about her experience with suffering from an autoimmune disease and not being taken seriously, but she also talks about other women's experiences and shows lots of studies and research.