Being believed isn’t always enough
Being believed isn’t always enough
- October 14, 2026
- In this essay for the Prindle Post, logic and philosophy of science graduate student Tori Cotton discusses treatment disparities in men’s and women’s pain management, the history behind it, and how feminist philosophy can help explain what’s going on
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"A review published on September 16th found widespread disparities in the medical treatment that men and women receive. When it comes to pain management, this imbalance is especially striking. Among patients presenting to emergency departments with nonspecific pain, women spend roughly 30 minutes longer than men in the emergency department, nurses are less likely to record female patients’ pain scores than male patients’ scores, and women are also less likely to receive pain medication when reporting the same level of distress as their male counterparts. Overall, women are often seen as exaggerating their pain, while men are seen as downplaying it.
On the surface, it might seem like this problem is fairly straightforward: women’s pain isn’t taken as seriously because women aren’t believed when they report it. But while there’s plenty of evidence that gendered stereotypes affect how physicians evaluate their patients, disbelief doesn’t really tell us the whole story. After all, believing someone is in pain doesn’t necessarily mean believing something needs to be done about it.”
Continue reading, courtesy of the Prindle Post.
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