Medical misogyny – the systemic devaluation of women’s (and people assigned female at birth’s) pain, symptoms, and autonomy – is a global issue that reflects broader social, economic and political structures rooted in patriarchy and capitalism. It must be understood not just as an individual or cultural bias, but as a consequence of capitalist exploitation, the commodification of healthcare and the historical subjugation of women under patriarchal systems.
It extends beyond the experiences of cisgender women to include the oppression of trans and gender non-conforming individuals within healthcare systems. These dynamics are especially apparent when examining global patterns of health inequality and the Irish healthcare system, where institutionalised sexism continues to have devastating consequences for women and trans people alike.
The Irish healthcare system demonstrates a long and sordid history of medical misogyny in action. Historically, Irish women’s healthcare has been profoundly shaped by the Catholic Church, which wielded significant control over health services for much of the 20th century. This has contributed to a culture of shame, secrecy and neglect around women’s health, particularly in relation to reproduction and sexuality.
Endometriosis
Medical misogyny plays a central role in the crisis of endometriosis care. Historically, women’s reproductive pain has been normalised or pathologised as “emotional,” leading to diagnostic delays that average nearly a decade. This isn’t accidental – it reflects underfunding of gynaecological research, male-dominated clinical leadership, and a biomedical model that treats male bodies as the default.
Endometriosis is a chronic, often excruciating condition causing pelvic pain, fatigue, heavy bleeding, and in some cases infertility. Its unpredictability can disrupt work, education, relationships, and basic daily functioning. Yet social expectations demand that women “push through” pain, maintain productivity, and fulfil caring roles regardless of their health. This pressure leads many to mask symptoms, accept inadequate treatment, and internalise guilt for not meeting these imposed standards. The result is a double burden: enduring the physical toll of the disease while performing emotional and domestic labour to meet society’s expectation of the “resilient” woman.
Endometriosis exposes the failures of commodified healthcare – long diagnostic delays, regional irregularity of specialist services, heavy individual costs for private scans and treatment, and workplace precarity when sufferers lack adequate sick-leave protections. A genuinely progressive proposal for addressing this crisis would therefore couple clinical measures (rapid-access clinics, multidisciplinary teams, subsidised medication, national centres of excellence, and GP training) with structural reforms: statutory paid medical leave, disability supports, and funding increases to public gynaecology services to end the two-tier system.
This July, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael voted against a Sinn Féin motion calling for a dedicated multidisciplinary endometriosis treatment centre where specialised excision surgery could be performed, which is considered the gold standard in endometriosis treatment. Instead, the Government proposed to focus on “regional hubs” – essentially retaining the current status quo of sub standard, two-tiered care. Their opposition to the proposal of a centre of excellence is presumably motivated by fiscal caution, bureaucratic objections, or a preference for incrementalism. This exposes the limits of neoliberal governance, where commitments to balancing budgets and constraining public sector expansion consistently overshadow and dismiss demands for comprehensive social care.
Voting against measures that materially ease suffering for working people exposes a governing bloc that prioritises budgetary optics over bodily autonomy and social reproduction.
Fundamental restructuring needed
Under capitalism, healthcare is shaped by profit motives and cost-cutting, so conditions that primarily affect women – especially working-class women – are deprioritised. The burden of navigating insufficient and collapsing services, paying for private consultations, or enduring untreated pain falls disproportionately on those with the least resources. Medical misogyny therefore reinforces class exploitation. It extracts unpaid labour from women who continue to work and care for others despite debilitating illness.
Addressing medical misogyny requires a fundamental restructuring of healthcare systems. From a socialist feminist standpoint, this means moving toward a model of healthcare that prioritises equity, dismantles patriarchal norms, and ensures universal access to high-quality care for all. This includes better training for healthcare providers to recognise and take women’s symptoms seriously, more funding for research on women’s health, and a radical shift away from profit-driven healthcare models toward a system that centres care, well-being, and the collective good.
In fighting for healthcare justice, women’s health must be treated not as an afterthought but as an essential aspect of broader struggles for social, economic, and gender equality.