Close Menu
Technology Mag

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    What's Hot

    Google makes it easier to let friends and kids control your smart home

    July 1, 2025

    Cloudflare Is Blocking AI Crawlers by Default

    July 1, 2025

    The GOP’s big spending bill could kill renewable energy projects

    July 1, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Subscribe
    Technology Mag
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
    • Home
    • News
    • Business
    • Games
    • Gear
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Security
    • Trending
    • Press Release
    Technology Mag
    Home » Sexist Myths Are a Danger to Health
    Science

    Sexist Myths Are a Danger to Health

    News RoomBy News RoomJuly 5, 20244 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp Email

    In 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration made an unprecedented recommendation, advising that women should receive a lower dosage of the insomnia drug zolpidem than men. The rationale behind it was that medication seemed to affect women for longer periods, which could become a safety issue.

    However, in 2019, research conducted at Tufts University concluded that the differential effect of the medication had nothing to do with sex. Rather, researchers found that what determined the rate at which the person cleared the drug from their system was their body size. The report concluded that the reduced prescribed dosage for women could in fact lead to underdosing and a failure to effectively treat insomnia. “They were using sex as a proxy for body size because we tend to collect data about sex; we don’t collect data about body size,” says Angela Saini, author of The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule. “This is the perverse way that sometimes medicine works: You base your diagnostics on the data you have rather than the data you need.”

    Indeed, Saini argues that many of the prevailing gaps in health outcomes between men and women have nothing to do with biological sex. “It can be so tempting for scientists to look at a gap and want to find a simple biological explanation for it, but when it comes to gender and health those simple explanations often don’t exist,” she said.

    Of course, sex differences do exist in aspects of health, such as reproductive health and physiology. However, what research suggests is that, in most cases, the health-related difference between men and women—from disease symptoms to drug efficacy—is really quite marginal. “The differences that do exist are down to gender,” Saini says. “Differences in the way people are treated and thought about and the assumptions we make about them.” That, according to Saini, is what explains many of the failures when it comes to women’s health.

    Consider, for instance, the common misconception that women present atypical heart-attack symptoms, different from men’s. This prevailing myth was quashed by a 2019 study, funded by the British Heart Foundation, at the University of Edinburgh. The research, which involved nearly 2,000 patients, showed that, in fact, 93 percent of both sexes reported chest pain—the most common symptom—while a similar percentage of men and women (nearly 50 percent) also felt pain radiating from their left arm. “The problem of underdiagnosis of women is because health professionals and even the women themselves who are having a heart attack believe heart attacks are something that mostly happens to men,” Saini says. Estimates indicate that differences in care for women have led to approximately 8,200 avoidable deaths due to heart attacks in England and Wales since 2014.

    “It’s not about men discriminating against women; this is often about women not being listened to—sometimes by other women,” she says. Another example that starkly illustrates how gender can affect health outcomes came from a 2016 Canadian study about patients who had been hospitalized with acute coronary syndrome. The research showed that the patients who experienced higher rates of recurrence were the ones who performed gender roles stereotypically associated with women—like doing more housework and not being the primary earner at home—independently of whether they were a man or a woman. “This was because people who carried out a female social role were more likely to be anxious.” Saini says.

    If these disparities are caused by the way patients are perceived and treated, the solution, to Saini, is clear: “We need to be careful to diagnose the problem where it is, not where we imagine it to be.” She highlights the successful work of Jennie Joseph, a British midwife who, in 2009, founded the Commonsense Childbirth School of Midwifery in Orlando, Florida, to support women without access to maternal health care. Research has shown that Black mothers, both in the US and in the UK, are three times more likely to die than white women.

    “Joseph lowered maternal mortality rates among minority women simply by improving the quality of their care, listening to their concerns, and responding when they say they’re in pain,” Saini says. “We don’t need technology to solve this issue. We just very simply can’t allow our biases and prejudices to get in the way.”

    This article appears in the July/August 2024 issue of WIRED UK magazine.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticlePolestar Is Bracing for the EV Tariff Wars. It May Not Emerge Unscathed
    Next Article Britain’s Brewing Battle Over Data Centers

    Related Posts

    How to Make AI Faster and Smarter—With a Little Help From Physics

    July 1, 2025

    ‘They’re Not Breathing’: Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls

    June 29, 2025

    The FDA Just Approved a Long-Lasting Injection to Prevent HIV

    June 28, 2025

    Scientists Are Sending Cannabis Seeds to Space

    June 27, 2025

    How the Universe and Its Mirrored Version Are Different

    June 25, 2025

    Scientists Discover the Key to Axolotls’ Ability to Regenerate Limbs

    June 25, 2025
    Our Picks

    Cloudflare Is Blocking AI Crawlers by Default

    July 1, 2025

    The GOP’s big spending bill could kill renewable energy projects

    July 1, 2025

    A Dedicated Hot Dog Cooker Is the Spirit of American Summer

    July 1, 2025

    Nothing Headphone 1 review: head-turning

    July 1, 2025
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    • Vimeo
    Don't Miss
    News

    The MLS Season Pass is 50 percent off ahead of the All-Star game and Leagues Cup 

    By News RoomJuly 1, 2025

    Major League Soccer (MLS) is now nearly halfway through its 2025 season, and Apple is…

    Senator Blackburn Pulls Support for AI Moratorium in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Amid Backlash

    July 1, 2025

    Laptop Mag is shutting down

    July 1, 2025

    How to Make AI Faster and Smarter—With a Little Help From Physics

    July 1, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of use
    • Advertise
    • Contact
    © 2025 Technology Mag. All Rights Reserved.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.