Period Pain & Gender Disparities in Healthcare
You may or may not be familiar with the period cramp simulator, a machine designed to mimic different levels of period pain. I’ve seen a few viral videos floating around in which men, who are obviously in pain, use a period cramp simulator. In contrast, women in these videos are usually calm due to being accustomed to the pain. While it’s funny to see the differences between the reactions of men and women, the amount of pain many people with periods face on a regular basis has negative repercussions in the medical world. For one, there is a pattern in the healthcare community of women not receiving as much medication to help ease general pain as men. Research has shown women are much less likely to receive painkillers for their ailment and post-surgery than men do. This inequality is, in part, due to the normalization of women’s pain and perceptions of women as overdramatic when it comes to expressing pain. In addition, studies of pain usually center male subjec...