The NHS has a women problem

‘End Medical Misogyny’ is the title of a new campaign by Mumsnet, the women’s internet forum. It is based on a comprehensive study into the chronic dismissal of women who seek medical assistance from the NHS – particularly for conditions that solely affect females, such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis and adenomyosis.

The study examined more than a decade’s worth of posts from Mumsnet users. Close to 100,000 posts to the forum between 2015 and 2025 contain language consistent with women experiencing ‘dismissal, disbelief or de-prioritisation’ in the public-healthcare system. The stories range from being gaslit about the presence of symptoms to being left with debilitating uterine pain for years without answers.

Half of those surveyed believe they have been ‘dismissed, ignored or not believed by an NHS professional because of their sex’. Sixty-four per cent said they have been ‘explicitly told their pain or symptoms were “normal” or “in their head”’. A further 68 per cent believed the NHS fails to take women’s health concerns seriously. Disregard of pain was described as a ‘dominant feature’ among women in the dataset. Many report being treated as if their pain was ‘tolerable, expected or insufficiently urgent’.

I spoke to Elle, 33, whose experience mirrors these findings. ‘I first noticed symptoms when I was 16’, she said of her adenomyosis, a condition that causes the uterus to swell to up twice its normal size, and is often accompanied by excessive bleeding and severe pain.

‘When I was 19, I was told the contraceptive pill would help with my heavy periods, but the pain part was ignored entirely. When I was 30, a shortage of the pill meant I could no longer get it, and all of the symptoms returned tenfold once I stopped. For two years, I went to the doctors again and again, only to be given different types of contraception. Every time I asked if we could get to the root of the issue and fix it, I was ignored.’

Though adenomyosis affects up to 35 per cent of women, Elle had never heard of it. Her story reflects that of many young women for whom hormonal contraception – due to its effect of masking certain symptoms – is presented as a ‘fix-all’ solution, while the possibility of an underlying issue is waved away. By the time Elle managed to procure a pelvic ultrasound, she had been living with chronic pain for 16 years.

The experience of having to ‘fight’ for a diagnosis was shared by 31-year-old Nicole. Nicole only recently discovered she has hypothalamic amenorrhoea (HA), a hormonal condition which prevents ovulation. Every time she came off birth control, she would lose her period, sometimes for up to nine months at a time. ‘I was told it was “normal”’, she tells me.

‘But years passed, and I was still being told to “wait and see”. Advice was always “if you’re not trying to conceive right now, just go back on the pill”. I had never heard of HA and only came across it through doing my own research. Even when I was telling doctors I believed I had HA, I really had to fight to see an endocrinologist who could confirm. If I hadn’t been so insistent, I might still be living in the dark with no idea my condition is actually reversible.’

The Mumsnet study compiles many experiences like Elle and Nicole’s. Those who did receive treatment hardly fared any better: some describe being left ‘screaming’ in pain during unauthorised internal examinations, crying for anaesthesia during cervical cautery, and being told to stop ‘making a fuss’ while suffering an internal haemorrhage. In a first-world country, it should be absurd to hear of such things. Yet in the NHS, such stories are routine.

Predictably, since the report’s emergence, the phrase ‘medical misogyny’ has been parrotted with fervour, including by health secretary Wes Streeting. ‘Medical misogyny has no place within our NHS’, he promised.

One has to wonder, though, if this misses the point. Misogyny denotes an ingrained prejudice. This is not to say women haven’t encountered male doctors who were genuinely sexist – one participant in the study described being asked by a male gynaecologist (on the morning of her operation, no less) if she was sure the pain wasn’t just in her head. He even asked her husband for consent before sterilising her. But it doesn’t appear that the majority of such cases, whether in the Mumsnet study or elsewhere, can be easily blamed on malice towards women.

This is demonstrated by the crisis engulfing NHS maternity services. Despite over 99 per cent of midwives in the UK being female in March 2017, NHS England has had a £27 billion legal bill for negligent maternity treatment hanging over its head since 2019. In these instances, mothers were denied pain relief, subjected to unnecessary procedures and neglected after surgery – almost exclusively by other women.

Of course, if it’s an example of real misogyny we seek, we need look no further than the medical world’s ongoing failure to confirm what a woman even is. For years, the NHS assigned trans and nonbinary individuals (ie, men) to wards based on their ‘gender identity’. Meanwhile, Endometriosis South Coast, a charity claiming to support women with the painful and life-altering condition, just appointed a biological male as its parliamentary representative. UN Women, an organisation with the power to impact women’s health policy around the globe, selected a biological male – transgender model Munroe Bergdorf – as its first UK champion. I won’t linger too long on these stupidities, however – for once, it would be nice to talk about women’s issues without having to make reference to the men who pretend to be them.

British women clearly require a much higher standard of care than they’re getting. For my part, I’d like to see this remedied not only with much-needed improvement in ‘bedside manner’, but also by affording uterine conditions the level of research that their prevalence warrants. It is inexcusable that there have been more studies into male pattern baldness than into endometriosis, an incurable condition that can cause severe pain and infertility.

The NHS has been failing the British public for years. But the systemic neglect of women’s health is a new low. This is a scandal we must not stand for.

Georgina Mumford is a content producer at spiked.