Care Gap: How Gender Bias Still Costs Patients Their Health
In an emergency room near you, people wait for care. The women among them may face delays nearly half an hour longer than men and be denied pain relief for the same symptoms. In fact, a recent study found that young women with chest pain wait longer for a doctor than young men with similar pain. Likewise, a review of stroke patients showed women with comparable symptoms receive critical clot-dissolving medication less often. Beyond hospitals, “gender-pain exaggeration bias” leads providers to discount women’s symptoms as less serious than men’s.
Meanwhile, many U.S. men delay or avoid medical visits until a health scare forces them to act. A Cleveland Clinic survey showed that 44% skip their annual physical and nearly two-thirds wait until symptoms worsen before seeking help. In mental health, a national survey shows a similar pattern, with 17% of men seeking treatment compared with 29% of women. Research also suggests that women are more likely to turn their mental-health struggles inward—experiencing anxiety or depression—while men are more likely to act out through substance use or aggression.
The striking difference is that while men impose stereotypes on themselves, women must still fight bias just to be heard by the very people they rely on for care. All too frequently, they suffer serious physical and psychological consequences when their symptoms are brushed off as “just stress” or “all in your head.” Even with unprecedented access to patient data and guidance from electronic health records (EHR), some health care providers still rely on outdated generalizations.
This is true of the chronic pain disorder fibromyalgia, where female patients often endure years of delay before diagnosis or receive opioid treatments that only worsen their problems. Although women make up more than 90% of cases, the true ratio may be closer to 60:40—meaning too many men go undiagnosed for “a woman’s condition.” Osteoporosis shows a similar pattern, with up to 86% of men over 50 undiagnosed despite a 30% risk of fracture. In these cases, gender assumptions work against both sexes: women when their symptoms are dismissed, and men when their symptoms are overlooked because they don’t fit preconceived norms.
It’s important to distinguish between cultural gender expectations and biological sex. While patient care should account for biological sex, it is counterproductive—and sometimes dangerous—when treatment is shaped by gender stereotypes instead of medical evidence. To that end, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has invested over $100 million in Sprint for Women’s Health initiatives to address women’s health challenges. Work like this matters because eliminating gendered blind spots improves outcomes for all.
This is a problem that those of us in health care can and should fix. We already have the data tools to identify gaps, track disparities, and deliver treatments that address unmet patient needs. EHR analytics from millions of anonymized health records highlight challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities for more informed practices across demographics. We know too much, and the science and the data have come too far, to let bias continue undermining the quality of care patients receive.
For women, clinical protocols should reinforce listen first, label later practices so doctors believe patients from the start, ask the right questions to learn more, and act without delay before symptoms further endanger their health. For men, the medical and public health communities can do more to end self-imposed silence and lower barriers to first visits, making it easier to establish care before problems escalate into emergencies.
Disparities in health care can harm all of us. Women face barriers put up by providers who dismiss their symptoms. Men face barriers often of their own making. The results are missed diagnoses, delayed interventions, and preventable suffering—especially for women who have long deserved better treatment. But we can break these old patterns and improve the lives of countless Americans. For a healthier future, more equitable care is urgent, overdue, and ours to champion.
About the Author
Seth Lederman is co-founder, CEO and chairman of Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp., a biotech company dedicated to developing novel medicines for central nervous system disorders. Its new first-line fibromyalgia treatment, Tonmya, is the first FDA-approved therapy for the chronic pain disorder in over 15 years.
© 2025 Dr. Seth Lederman