medical discrimination is a
patriarchal weapon Words by Jamie Murray-Todd What kind of symptoms would you look for if you thought you were having a heart attack? If you answered chest discomfort or pain, shortness of breath, and nausea or lightheadedness, you’re correct! Only if you’re a man, though. For women, the signs can be different; unexplained fatigue, dizziness, sweating, and neck, back, and jaw pain can be just as telling of a heart attack as the symptoms also experienced by men. If this is new information to you, I’m not trying to scare you – it’s just important to know, for your wellbeing and for that of those around you. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women across the world, so it’s important that we look out for ourselves and each other. The thing is, symptoms of heart disease and attacks in women aren’t common knowledge. And there’s a reason for that. What we know about heart disease comes primarily from information gleaned through cardiovascular clinical 44
trials. From 2010 to 2017, only 38% of participants across 740 cardiovascular trials were women. It wasn’t until 1993 that the National Institutes of Health mandated that women and “members of minority groups” be included in clinical trials in the United States. Years later, these same demographics are still underrepresented. In Australia, we do not have any equivalent policy mandating equal representation in clinical trials. Most medical research is conducted with white, cisgender men as the default subject, and so they’re often overrepresented in information accessible by the general public. This puts everyone else at risk, because we’re so often looking for the wrong symptoms, or don’t even know that we should be looking for alternative symptoms at all. Alzheimer’s and lung cancer are further examples of health issues posing significant risks to women, whose gender-specific symptoms and treatments are often excluded from the conversation.
