The Victorian government has launched a new inquiry into women’s pain, but there is nothing new about the gender pain gap. Rampant medical misogyny is deeply entrenched in how medicine is taught and practised. It is time to change this. 

The Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA), the peak representative body for over 18,000 medical students across Australia, has made a submission to this inquiry through surveying current medical students on their education on women’s pain. As the future medical taskforce, medical students can uniquely contribute to action in dissolving the gender pain gap and working towards a more equitable future. 

Survey findings highlight that medical education relating to gender-based pain management is unsatisfactory, inconsistent and that students are left feeling disempowered to face these clinical presentations. Given the significant implications for patient morbidity, reformative action needs to be taken urgently to restructure the foundation of clinical practice i.e. medical education. 

Australia’s future doctors recognise that women’s chronic pain is a significant issue. Ninety-four percent of participants were aware that gender-variations exist in clinical presentations, however, only 1 in 4 students felt their education sufficiently addressed this. Concerningly, around 50% of the total survey participants reported feeling inadequately trained in recognising and diagnosing gynaecological and non-gynaecological causes of women’s pain. 

Forty-one percent of survey participants reported low confidence in differentiating variations in women’s pain presentations and forty-five percent reported low confidence in understanding treatment and management approaches to chronic pain. Previous studies have shown that healthcare providers often receive inadequate training on gender differences in pain perception and management leading to disparities in care. 

The majority of respondents acknowledged that stigma still exists around women’s pain in clinical practice, with many witnessing incidents of clinicians disregarding female patients’ pain and exercising dismissive rhetoric in communication.

AMSA calls on Australian medical schools to form a panel of pain specialists and gender medicine experts who can integrate patient-centred pain medicine curriculum. Importantly, similar training will need to be delivered for current practising doctors via the Australian Medical Association and specialist doctor colleges.   

“Such critical gaps in medical curricula need to be addressed as they will continue to contribute to ongoing under-recognition, underdiagnosis and mismanagement of women’s pain,” says  AMSA Sexual Reproductive Health, a global health initiative tackling sexual and reproductive health issues.

“As a discipline, we have a long road of improvement to go down. AMSA hopes this inquiry only hastens this journey.” 

*AMSA recognises that cis women, transgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, gender non-conforming individuals and gender diverse individuals overall, may all experience the gender pain gap and deserve to be recognised through this inquiry. Thus, the survey supported a range of experiences of the gender pain gap including but not limited to those of cisgender women.