Dealing with any kind of pain is challenging enough, let alone when that pain is recurring, worsening or chronic. At the very least, you want someone to listen to and validate your experience – even if there’s no quick or easy answer. However, according to new research from Nurofen, young women across the UK aren’t receiving this kind of care and attention. In fact, a massive four in five women aged 18–24 report having their pain ignored or dismissed.

The figure comes from Nurofen’s third-annual Gender Pain Gap Index report, which surveyed over 5,000 men and women across the UK to find out about the different stages of life where gender pain bias is most prominent, as well as the impact this bias can have.

According to the report, young women are most likely to feel like their pain has been dismissed or ignored, with 81% of women aged 18–24 feeling this way. By comparison, 73% of men aged 18–24 felt this way, suggesting that pain dismissal is rife across the board but particularly bad for women. And this isn’t something that’s just happening to adults; one in 10 women said they first had their pain dismissed by a healthcare professional when they were between 10–15.  

Sadly, it’s not just young women feeling this way, either. Of women aged 45 or over, 56% who live with pain said they felt their pain had been dismissed, compared to 49% of men.

And this pain is having a real impact on the lives of the women affected. According to the report, a fifth of women feel their career has been affected by having their pain dismissed, while a third feel like it’s impacted their mental health – up from a quarter of women in the 2023 report. One in four have also reported starting to question their own sanity after being brushed off.

Gabby Menezes-Forsyth, 25, who suffered from extreme period pain as a teenager and was later diagnosed with endometriosis knows how detrimental having your pain dismissed can be. “I felt from an early age that the extreme period pain I was experiencing seemed to be worse than others, but I didn’t have a frame of reference for what was normal,” she says. “I felt dismissed as ‘dramatic’ by everyone – from loved ones to teachers.” 

It was only after she had a miscarriage aged 22 that she was diagnosed with a biconcave uterus and endometriosis. “In frequent trips to the GP [before my diagnosis], their dismissal never appeared cruel or to suggest that I wasn’t in pain, but rather that there was nothing they could do,” she continues. “Even with the clarity that the diagnosis offered, it was a difficult realisation to come to, understanding that this would always be something that would impact my life.”

Following on from the report, Nurofen has announced several key measures it will be taking over the following year to try and reduce the gender pain gap and its impact on women. They include partnering with Plan International UK to deliver a peer-led education programme designed to break down stigma and build girls’ confidence when it comes to managing periods and period pain and publishing the first in-depth medical education study into gender pain bias with researchers from Imperial College London, with the aim to improve medical training. 

“With three years of data, we can now start to see the nuances of how women’s pain is dismissed and, crucially, use this insight to help address gender biases for those who experience it the most,” said Dr Bill Laughey, senior medical scientist at Nurofen’s parent company, Reckitt. “This is why we are taking a more active role in campaigning to not just raise awareness of the gender pain gap, but for action to be taken.”

It’s clear that more needs to be done not only to offer new treatments for women living with chronic pain, but also to ensure that they simply feel heard and understood. While validation and empathy may not relieve pain, they can make the experience of pain feel a little easier to handle – and it’s about time women weren’t left to shoulder that burden on their own. 

Images: Getty