Gender-bias in medical diagnosis

Gender-biased diagnosing is a controversialsociological observation which asserts that medical and psychological diagnosis may be influenced by the gender of the patient. Several studies have found evidence of differential diagnosis for patients with similar ailments but of different sexes.

The phenomenon may affect physical diagnosis. Women are more likely to be given a diagnosis of psychosomatic nature for a physical ailment than men, despite presenting with similar symptoms. Women sometimes have trouble being taken seriously by physicians when suffering from medically unexplained illness, and report difficulty receiving appropriate medical care for their illnesses because doctors repeatedly diagnose their physical complaints as related to psychiatric problems. Clinical offices that rely on healthcare routines become less distinct due to biased medical knowledge of gender. There is a distinct differentiation between gender and sex in the medical sense. Gender is the societal construction of what femininity and masculinity is, whereas, sex is the biological aspect that defines the dichotomy of female and male. The way of lifestyle and the place in society are often considered when diagnosing patients.

According to traditional medical studies, most of these medical studies were done on men thus overlooking many issues that were related to women’s health. This topic alone sparked controversy and brought about question to the medical standard of our time. Research that was done on diseases that affected women more were less funded than those diseases that affected men and women equally.

There was an example of gender bias in the psychiatric field as well, Hamburg notes that, "psychiatrists would diagnose women with depression and then, eventually psychiatrists would begin to assume that women were more depressed than men due to the fact that the patients that were examined by the psychiatrists were women and they had similar symptoms. As for the men, they were diagnosed with drug or alcohol problems and they were thrown out of the study.”

As for the Women’s Health Equity Act that was passed in 1993, this Act gave women the chance to participate in medical studies and examine the gender differences. Before the Women’s Health Equity Act was introduced there was no research done on infertility, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer which were essential to women’s health.

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