The Normalization of Period Pain: A Barrier to Women's Healthcare
When thinking of menstruation, a recurring concept that often is adjoined with it is – period cramps. Globally, every menstruator has experienced at least one episode of debilitating menstrual cramps which can even cause inability to move and do one’s normal routine. As much as this is a recognized issue, something as subjective as pain brings its own problems with healthcare and health seeking behavior. Period cramps are so normalized that many times, when people have a pathological level of pain – they do not seek medical help, because even if they do it is quickly pushed to the side as ‘normal’. Not just that, but because menstruators are so used to pain – it increases their threshold to consider something as painful enough to seek medical help, thus many times this causes a lag in quick diagnoses with many diseases from stones to straight up heart attacks. The misunderstanding of women’s pain, particularly menstrual pain, has deep historical roots and continues to create significant barriers to accessing adequate healthcare. This issue stems from a mix of cultural biases, medical ignorance, and systemic dismissal, often leaving women undertreated or misdiagnosed.
World Health Day 2025: Why 'Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures' Hinges on Prioritizing Women's Health
As April 7 dawns on us, it marks World Health Day. On this World Health Day, WHO launches a yearlong campaign, 'Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures’, that urges governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths and prioritize women’s longer-term health and well-being. This aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 3, which is ‘ensuring healthy lives, and promoting well-being for all ages.’
According to the WHO, close to 300,000 women lose their lives due to pregnancy or childbirth each year, while over 2 million babies die in their first month of life, and around 2 million more are stillborn. That’s roughly 1 preventable death every 7 seconds. Based on current trends, a staggering 4 out of 5 countries are off track to meet targets for improving maternal survival by 2030. 1 in 3 will fail to meet targets for reducing newborn deaths. Thus, putting into perspective the importance of prioritizing women’s health - may it be birth-related, or menstrual issues. Let us come back to the focus on pain and healthcare, and its correlation to women’s health.
From Ancient Beliefs to Victorian 'Hysteria': A History of Misunderstanding Women's Pain
Historically, women’s pain—especially menstrual pain—was misunderstood through religious and pseudoscientific lenses. In medieval Europe, the Church tied menstrual cramps to Eve’s sin, framing them as divine punishment rather than a medical issue (as written and interpreted from the Bible from Genesis 3:6). No serious treatment was offered beyond herbal solutions like mug wort, which had limited efficacy. By the 19th century, Victorian medicine labelled women’s pain as ‘hysteria’, a catch-all diagnosis rooted in the Greek word hystera meaning womb (and yes, this is the origin of the word – uterus). Doctors like Silas Weir Mitchell prescribed rest cures or even ovary removal for complaints ranging from cramps to mood swings, assuming the uterus drove irrationality [Hoffman & Tarzian, 2001]. These views normalized dismissing women’s pain as emotional rather than physiological. In fact, in many instances it is noted that women who suffered from severe menstrual cramps were considered possessed by evil spirits, and had to go through insane exorcisms to get rid of it. This ignorance bled into other women-related issues such as the pain of labour and childbirth which were also treated with the same nonchalance, tagged as issues that have no pathological foundation but are just religiously oriented or such.
The Historical Neglect of Menstruation in Medical Research
Menstruation itself was shrouded in taboo, rarely studied systematically. Early medical texts, like those of Hippocrates (circa 400 BCE), focused on fertility over pain management, leaving a knowledge gap [Hippocrates, On the Nature of Women]. This set a precedent: women’s reproductive pain was natural, inevitable, and unworthy of serious inquiry. The act of menstruating was only viewed from the lens of sexual maturity, hence when an individual attained menarche – they were considered eligible to marry and carry children, and as long as they menstruated, they were considered ‘fertile’ and their sole responsibility became conceiving and carrying children. So, the discomforts of menstruation were never a part of the conversation, which made women consider unnecessary and absurd practices to help with period cramps – such as burning aromatics and rubbing it on external genitalia or abdomen to help with cramps. Any other pathological issues were completely neglected.
Lingering Biases: Underestimation of Women's Pain in Modern Healthcare
Today, unfortunately, the legacy of these attitudes persists in healthcare. Studies show women’s pain is consistently underestimated compared to men’s. A 2001 review in Pain (the journal) found healthcare providers often perceive women as exaggerating discomfort, especially menstrual or pelvic pain, attributing it to psychological factors [Hoffman & Tarzian, 2001]. A 2018 study in The Journal of Pain revealed women wait longer in emergency rooms—65 minutes versus 49 for men—for abdominal pain treatment, partly because their symptoms are taken less seriously [Samulowitz et al., 2018].
The Case of Endometriosis: Recognizing When 'Normal' Period Pain Needs Attention
Menstrual pain, like dysmenorrhea, exemplifies this. Affecting up to 90% of women at some point (per ACOG, 2015), it’s often brushed off as ‘normal’. Yet severe cases can signal endometriosis—a condition where uterine tissue grows outside the uterus, causing debilitating pain and infertility. Learn more about endometriosis and signs that it’s time to get checked out. It takes an average of 7-10 years for diagnosis, with patients seeing multiple doctors who dismiss symptoms as routine cramps [Nnoaham et al., 2011]. A 2021 BMJ analysis found women with endometriosis report being told that it is just in their head, or told to deal with it normally like it is just another cramp [Ghiasi et al., 2021].
Real-World Consequences: The Impact of Dismissed Women's Pain
This kind of dismissal from healthcare providers leads to diagnostic delays, thus worsening prognosis for diseases. Add the lack of research for women’s health on top of this, and it creates a cocktail for bad women’s representation in healthcare. Time and again it can be seen and heard from various sources, about how women have to stand up for themselves, self-advocating to be taken seriously especially with disorders involving pain and menstruation, just because there isn’t an objective way to visualise or quantify pain. With diseases like endometriosis that cause life threatening bleeding and severe pain in the worst cases, a delay of 7-10 years is a big letdown on the part of healthcare providers.
Impact on Quality of Life and Mental Health
The consequences are stark. Women with chronic pelvic pain report lower quality of life, missing work or school—10% of African girls skip school monthly during periods due to pain and lack of care, per UNESCO 2019. In the U.S., a 2022 JAMA Network Open study found women with undiagnosed pelvic pain face higher rates of anxiety and depression, compounded by medical gaslighting [Mogilnicka et al., 2022].
Hope for the Future: Raising Awareness and Addressing Bias in Healthcare
But not all hope is lost, with resources like social media a lot of campaigns and hashtags give individuals a platform to talk and share their experiences. Not just that, but according to the Lancet 2021 even doctors are being trained and made to understand the bias that exists in healthcare and ways to cope with it. With the abundance of knowledge on the internet, individuals themselves are more aware and educated, thus bridging the gap between healthcare provider and receiver, and fostering more productive and open communication to understand each side better. Thus, it falls upon the shoulders of all of us to talk, understand, learn, and grow – and bridge the gap that a simple thing like pain can bring into the bigger picture.
Saathi's Commitment to Women's Health: Providing Sustainable and Healthy Menstrual Hygiene Solutions
At Saathi, we believe that access to safe and sustainable menstrual hygiene products is a fundamental aspect of women's health, directly contributing to the 'Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures'. We also focus on women’s health especially through menstrual hygiene management. One of the issues we address is not only lack of access to menstrual products which can lead to missing school, but also lack of menstrual health education. When we started Saathi, we launched our 1 Million Pads Intiative ensures everyone has pads, no matter who or where; while also ensuring that the pads are good for one’s health and environment. We run workshops as part of this program to discuss the basics of menstrual health and hygiene as well as how to use pads and dispose of them. In 2022, we successfully distributed 1 million pads, so we then launched our 10 Million Pads Initiative. We have also created resources to learn more about women’s health topics and menstrual health including our Science with Saathi series. This year, let us do our part for maternal, neonatal, and women’s health by creating awareness, donating, and sharing important information about women’s health with others in our community!