A Tough Pill to Swallow: Women’s Overmedication and Gender Discrimination in Clinics
Aarya Sawant
October 2024
Historically, women have been barred from being physicians due to a number of obstacles set in place. This has resulted in a male-centric view of medicine which has often cost women their lives due to ignorance in biological sex differences. Despite advances in gender equality, this gender bias persists in hospitals to this day.
Prescription drugs are a vital part of the healthcare system, and one that is only going to grow bigger with time as technology advances. Approximately 131 million people in the United states use prescription drugs–75% of whom are women.[1] Children born in 2019 are predicted to spend half of their life taking medication, with women likely spending an estimated 60% (around 50 years) doing so.[2] In fact, women are more likely to take drugs overall, due to obvious factors such as birth control and contraceptives.[2]
With this in mind, it’s shocking to discover that women are excluded from clinical trials, usually due to the reasoning that hormone cycles will provide misleading results.[3] Additionally, women of child-bearing age have been restricted from being tested due to fear of potential birth complications. Instead, men are considered the standard patient, making sweeping generalizations that cause real harm. This begins in the initial process as well, as male cells are used in early testing stages.[3]
As a result, women make up the majority of reported adverse reactions to drugs. Side-effects can most commonly manifest as headaches, nausea, nosebleeds. In more serious cases, patients have been known to suffer from hallucinations, seizures, and cardiac irregularities. Men and women have different levels of metabolism, and women’s kidneys and livers have been observed to process drugs at different rates, as well as drugs lingering longer in the tissue.[2] This issue affects as many as 86 drugs according to a 2020 study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). This includes widely used drugs such as aspirin, morphin, heparin, sertraline, and bupropion.[4]
This doesn’t end with lab testing either, as it extends further to sexism in clinics. While reports from men of adverse side effects from prescription medication are often confirmed and reported by doctors, women’s are largely self-reported, showing a lack of seriousness when taking these cases into account.[5]
It’s apparent that we need to change the way we test prescription drugs, as well as managing drug reports by women with a greater degree of seriousness than at present. Only by challenging and changing the long-standing biases within the medical community can we hope to improve health outcomes for women and create a more equitable healthcare system for all. As we look to the future, it is crucial to advocate for policies and practices that prioritize gender inclusivity, ultimately leading to safer and more effective medical care for everyone.
References
[1] Georgetown University. (2019). Prescription Drugs – Health Policy Institute. Health Policy Institute. https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rxdrugs/
[2] Americans will spend half their lives taking prescription drugs, study finds | Penn State University. (2019). Psu.edu. https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/americans-will-spend-half-their-lives-taking-prescription-drugs-study-finds
[3] Lerner, L. (2020, June 22). Women are overmedicated because drug dosage trials are done on men, study finds. University of Chicago News. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/women-are-overmedicated-because-drug-dosage-trials-are-done-men-study-find
[4] Zucker, I., & Prendergast, B. J. (2020). Sex differences in pharmacokinetics predict adverse drug reactions in women. Biology of Sex Differences, 11(1). https://bsd.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13293-020-00308-5[5] Lee, K. M. N., Rushovich, T., Gompers, A., Boulicault, M., Worthington, S., Lockhart, J. W., & Richardson, S. S. (2023). A Gender Hypothesis of sex disparities in adverse drug events. Social Science & Medicine, 339, 116385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116385
