Women suffer. Since the beginning of humanity, women have suffered. And I’m not talking about the apple that Satan offered to Eve, we aren’t here to debate the faith or beliefs of billions of people, but rather to discuss a simple fact: the anatomy of women. The female body is a subject that will never die, surprisingly, in male-dominated circles. One might argue that, of course, women wouldn’t talk about their own bodies; they already know everything they need to know through the simple act of existing and inhabiting a body of their own. If you are under that impression, I am delighted to announce that you are wrong.
For decades, medical research and clinical trials focused primarily on men. Until the early 1990s, women were often excluded from drug studies, despite these results being applied universally. Let’s use Ambien, a drug used for short-term treatment of insomnia, as an example: it was prescribed at the same dose for men and women for years before researchers discovered that women metabolize it slower and actually need half of the “average” dosage, even after taking into account body weight. Thank God for all those women that fell asleep behind the wheel the morning after taking their daily prescription. I’m sure it took at least fifteen women under the influence of Ambien endangering their lives before someone thought it was weird, you know, with women being “bad drivers” and all.
Many conditions also present themselves differently in women. During a heart attack, instead of crushing chest pain, women are more likely to experience fatigue, nausea, or back and jaw pain. Women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack. Similar issues happen with autoimmune diseases or ADHD, which often look different in women and can be misattributed to stress or emotional issues. One analysis by KFF Health News found that women and minorities are far more likely to be mislabeled or misdiagnosed than white male patients. Women’s symptoms are more often chalked up to anxiety, hormones, or weight, even more so for women of color. This kind of dismissal is often referred to as medical gaslighting. I am certain that every woman has experienced this at least once in their life. When medicine is based on male norms and research overlooks women’s unique presentations, many women end up cycling through providers for years before getting answers, if none at all.
I find myself agreeing from time to time, taking a walk down the streets, watching all these strange happenings around me. Ten to fifteen car crashes a day, fatigue, nausea, I look over to see a pile of drowsy mothers and think: “being a mother is so stressful,” as I walk to class. Once I’m there and I start having issues focusing while my classmates whisper among themselves and the professor rambles on, I think to myself: “damn it Mia, stop being so emotional and pay attention to the professor already. You’re so hormonal.”
Sarcasm aside, health is tricky and it depends on the individual. You would think this would favor women since they are actually more likely to share more context or details about their symptoms, but in a rush, providers may interrupt or miss key clues. So they don’t know much about our bodies but they don’t make the time to learn about them either. I am convinced some women live a whole lifetime, through a series of trial and error, and die never truly understanding how their bodies functioned. This leads me to my next point: education.
How is it that girls are more likely to continue reading after the early teen years, make up most of the book market target audience and still represent over two-thirds of the world’s 796 million illiterate people? You might be thinking: “pfff nah, that can’t be true, my daughter can read, my wife can read, my mother can read, her mother can read more or less, I mean to be fair, they did live in different times.” We did not. We continue to live in the same times, if anything, with every passing day, we see for ourselves how the future moves on ahead, leaving us behind, while the past is made more present.
Not to fear, for I have found the ultimate reason to promote women’s education. Did you know a mother’s education level is a critical factor in her children’s survival rates? There, I said it. Please let us go to school so that we can provide better for our breadwinning husbands that we all, most definitely, need to take care of while not understanding our needs whatsoever. I find that my proposition is a better solution towards the ever growing worry of mankind’s extinction.
Is that why they refuse us the right to an abortion? Oh, sorry, I miswrote. Well, I guess since we’re on the topic, I find myself constantly confused about the hyperfixation of preventing women from doing… things. When I’m at a fast food restaurant, waiting in line to order, I scan through the menu absentmindedly. I already know what I came there to eat, however if an item on the menu was circled in red and marked as ‘BANNED FOR WOMEN’, while it’s not what I would’ve ordered, I’d at least be disturbed. It’s on the menu, it’s an option that survived the evaluation process of several professionals in the chain of command, nobody is forcing anyone to order it, and yet I am banned from the choice. A personal choice, if given to me, would be beaten by my preferred usual order found under the Five Dollar Menu, host of the only options I can afford while being paid 20% less than my male peers.
What truly irks me of it all, is that while male regional managers across the country get most of the heat for standing by their ‘BANNED FOR WOMEN’ food item, there is a significant amount of female regional managers, part-time employees, drive through employees that rally behind this ban. Which leads me to my closure: ignorance.
When my brother and my sister in law announced they were going to have a baby, after our initial reactions, we made a game out of which gender we thought the baby would be. I am proud to say that the result of the birth was a healthy baby girl, if and until she says otherwise. We held extensive conversations on who we thought she would become and the things she would face. Whatever the case, she will fight as we all have fought, and so long as we continue to open ourselves to hard conversations like these, she is insured. She will never be alone, because despite our differences in our beliefs and in our experiences, there is one thing that will always unite us: we are women.
I am grateful to Marie Curie for becoming the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and for opening the doors of scientific discovery to women everywhere. I am grateful to Amelia Earhart for daring to fly across the Atlantic alone and proving that courage can lift women into spaces once thought unreachable. I am grateful to Junko Tabei for becoming the first woman to summit Mount Everest, proving that determination can conquer even the tallest mountains. I am grateful to Sandra Day O’Connor for becoming the first woman on the United States Supreme Court, opening the path for women in the highest levels of justice. I am grateful to Ada Lovelace for writing the first computer algorithm and envisioning the future of computing long before it existed. I am grateful to Rita Moreno for becoming the first Puerto Rican woman to win an Academy Award and for opening doors for Latino artists in film and theater. I am grateful to Sonia Sotomayor for becoming the first Latina justice on the United States Supreme Court and for inspiring generations to pursue justice. I am grateful to Julia de Burgos for becoming one of Puerto Rico’s most powerful poetic voices and for paving the way for women in Caribbean literature.
Thank you for overcoming your suffering.
References:
Drugs.com. (2024, February 29). Ambien (zolpidem): Uses, dosage, side effects, and warnings.
Greenblatt, D. J., Harmatz, J. S., & Roth, T. (2019). Zolpidem and gender: Are women really at risk? Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, 39(3), 189–199.
Prenuvo. (2025, May 1). The most common health misdiagnoses in women—and why they keep happening.
https://prenuvo.com/blog/the-most-common-health-misdiagnoses-in-women–and-why-they- keep-happening
UN Women. (n.d.). Facts and figures.
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/fact s-and-figures
