Medical Misdiagnosis in Women

While all types of people are misdiagnosed, women are more frequently misdiagnosed because of gender bias. “Gender bias describes the phenomenon in which man, as in the gendered meaning of the word, acts as the measure for all of the human race. Gender bias is often an unconscious force, based on deep-rooted beliefs and stereotypes, that results in a discrepancy in the way that people of different genders are treated” (Greenhalgh, 2022). 

As cited by Thompson and Blake in their paper, Newman-Toker et al. found that various studies resulted in women being misdiagnosed more often than men, with women being more likely to be misdiagnosed for illnesses that affect all and with female-specific illnesses taking seven years to be diagnosed properly on average (Thompson & Blake, 2020). This shows that misdiagnosis in women still occurs, despite various efforts attempting to solve it. These changes had many holes in solving the issue and do not fully address whatever they need to (Seegert, 2018). Considering this issue has not yet been fixed, the flaws surrounding the medical system in regards to women’s health must be reexamined in order to provide the necessary changes to prevent unnecessary misdiagnosis in women.

Law Regarding Women’s Health

One debated issue of women's health is the law surrounding it. For instance, the National Institutes of Health changed their policy numerous times to attempt to accommodate women, eventually leading to Congress changing this policy to become law in 1993 (National Institutes of Health, 2017). This law forces researchers to include women and minorities in their studies, despite any challenges. This change has not been well received by all. For instance, medically experienced researchers had expected sex-specific conditions to be diagnosed differently across genders, however they found that this was not the case and diagnoses were the same (Sun et al., 2023). They found that research was not resulting in more accurate diagnoses despite the change in law, suggesting that misdiagnoses resulted from more than the factors that the law covered, demonstrating how they suggest that the law is ineffective since the law only targets part of the issue. However, Greenhalgh disagrees with this reasoning. She reasons that even if women are being included in studies, their results are lumped together with men’s results, which takes away from women’s symptoms specifically (Greenhalgh, 2022). Similarly, Seegert (2018) argues that despite the changed law, women are still underrepresented in research and much of the research that does include women simply adds women to studies with males (Seegert, 2018). She reasons that this represents the research community’s lack of consideration of women’s health and women’s specific symptoms. While Sun et al. argue that the changed law was insufficient due to the law not covering all issues, Greenhalgh and Seegert support that the conjoinment of men and women in studies is why the changed law was insufficient. Ultimately, all of the authors are in agreement that the changed law has minimally helped women’s misdiagnoses.

Knowledge of Women’s Health

Another advancement regarding women’s health is the advancement of knowledge of women’s health. As Harvard associate professor Koven (2025) mentioned, “Doctors urged even asymptomatic women to take HRT, telling them it would decrease their risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia, prevent osteoporosis, and improve their overall sense of well-being. Then, in 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative study showed that prolonged use of HRT increases women’s risk of heart disease, stroke, and breast cancer” (Koven, 2025). Koven uses this information to open her article transcripting an interview regarding women’s health, showcasing her own belief that a previous lack of knowledge in women’s medicine resulted in not knowing enough about women’s symptoms which put them at risk. The fact that this gap in knowledge still exists is also supported by the author considering the information given during the interview, such as how most autoimmune diseases are in women yet little is known about them (Koven, 2025). However, Gesi et al. support that misdiagnoses are stereotypical, rather than misdiagnosis resulting from not having enough information. Psychiatry and neurobiology experts Gesi et al. (2021) found that “ ... studies … pointed out that even when the level of impairment was similar, women tended to show interests, behaviors, and communicative features that were socially more acceptable and in line with gender stereotypes, increasing females’ chances of mimetizing typically developing subjects and conversely decreasing the probability of them being diagnosed and treated in a timely way…” (Gesi et al., 2021). This demonstrates that Gesi et al. support that women tended to show symptoms that relate to gender stereotypes, demonstrating how misdiagnosis in women may result from incorrect information. Although Gesi et al. have found this, Seegert, similar to Koven, supports that misdiagnosis is from a lack of information. Seegert (2018) argues that a large setback of women’s medicine is the lack of knowledge of women specific symptoms and conditions, stating how women have historically been excluded and underrepresented in research studies and stating how women still have more medically unexplained symptoms than men (Seegert, 2018). As such, Seegert believes that the issue of not understanding women’s symptoms as well as men’s symptoms results from not knowing about women’s symptoms. Overall, the larger issue at hand is the fact that there is a lack of knowledge of women’s health compared to men’s health, which all of the authors recognize.

Bias in Medical Professionals

Additionally, another issue of what should be fixed is bias in medical professionals. As mentioned by Özel et al. (2025), of who are members of a Department of Psychiatry at their respective schools, a Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, or both, in their study, women being stereotyped as more emotional than men were shown to affect the evaluations of their condition, leading to women being more likely to be misdiagnosed with Bipolar Personality Disorder when they have Antisocial Personality Disorder (Özel et al., 2025). Thus, they found that stereotypes, a reflection of bias, resulted in women not receiving proper diagnosis or care. Similarly, another study found that women would be outright dismissed if their condition was rare and doctors were not knowledgeable on their condition, stating “After suffering with extreme pain for approximately five years, Amiria conducted extensive research and self-diagnosed her condition. However, it took a further three months to convince her healthcare team to take her findings seriously” (Thompson & Blake, 2020). This demonstrates how the authors found that doctors being unsupportive of women negatively impact their willingness to be diagnosed or assisted. However, researchers with master degrees and doctorates in neurology “found that women with severe carotid stenosis and TIA are less likely to be treated with CEA than men, independent of other clinical factors. There is little data for comparison…” (Poisson et al., 2010). This shows that the authors see a bias but are unable to show proof. Similarly, a medical director who is also the President of the Texas Heart Institute found that “[d]espite similar surgical outcomes with carotid endarterectomy, women have been offered surgery less often in every age group studied, which indicates that reasons beyond age and surgical risk are in play…” (Hernandez-Vila, 2011). He also mentions that more research is needed to determine the apparent bias. While Özel et al. and Thompson and Blake are certain that clinician bias has led to misdiagnosis, Poisson et al. and Hernandez-Vila are able to identify that bias led to diagnosis in their own studies, but do not have the proof to confirm it. Essentially, all believe bias does affect misdiagnosis in women.

Conclusion

All in all, the progress in fixing misdiagnosis of women’s health has been minimal, as supported by the lack of assistance that changed law brings, the lack of knowledge of women’s health, and the bias of medical professionals in diagnosing. In order to fix this problem, these issues must be given more attention.

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