In recent months there has been a renewed focus on ‘medical misogyny’ with numerous reports highlighting the routine dismissal of female patients seeking healthcare, particularly for reproductive health conditions. A report by the Women and Equalitiies Committee (UK) in 2024 found that despite the prevalence of these conditions, it can take women years to receive diagnoses and treatment, often leaving them in significant pain that impacts on life, education and work opportunities. The report highlighted a lack of awareness and training about these conditions amongst primary care practitioners and advocated for women’s health hubs to be rolled out more widely.
There is plenty of evidence that this is by no means the only area where women’s interactions with healthcare are problematic. A survey of almost 100,000 posts carried out by mumsnet found that half of the women on the site talking about healthcare in the past decade (between 2015-2025) felt that they had been ignored or not believed by an NHS professional because of their sex, whilst 64% had been told that pain they experienced was not real or was ‘in their heads’. The report highlighted the need for women to fight to be heard and acknowledged within the system.
But this is not new. From ancient Greek ideas of a womb wandering round the body causing various maladies in women if they were not kept pregnant, to medieval witch trials that targeted female healers and right through to modern controversies around endometriosis and autoimmune conditions, this issue has been researched and documented for many years. As Elinor Cleghorn highlights in her book ‘Unwell Women’ (2021) “Over centuries, women’s bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them.”
For those of us who teach in health faculties and help prepare the healthcare workers of the future there is an additional concern. Alongside the rise in awareness of medical misogyny there is a growth, or change, in the way that sexism is manifesting in the classroom. First identified as a trend in schools, the rise in misogynistic behaviour and attitudes towards both female teachers and students has been highlighted over the past few years. In the UK, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Whiteman suggested that the rise in incidents in schools reflects online trends with “significant world leaders and influencers being able to portray overtly misogynistic views, opinions and actions with no rebuttal”. This has now reached universities with the first of the Gen Z students reaching university age.
A study of 23,000 people, conducted across 29 countries, found stark differences between men from different generations, and between men and women, when it came to gender roles. 31% of Gen Z men (born between 1997 and 2012) agreed that wives should always obey their husbands, as did almost 1 in 5 (18%) of Gen Z women. This compared to 13% of Boomer (born between 1945 and 1964) men and 6% of women. Focusing on the Gen Z, student age, population, key findings included:
- Almost a quarter (24%) of Gen Z men agreeing that a woman should not appear too independent or self-sufficient, compared with 15% of women.
- 59% of Gen Z men say that men are expected to do too much to support equality, compared 41% of women.
These attitudes towards gender roles can be seen in universities with a number of studies highlighting the impact of extreme, regressive, patriarchal views on students. One study in Canada highlighted the impact of such views on discussion within the classroom, citing the need to change the way topics are taught to counter attitudes learned within the manosphere. Similar concerns have been raised in Australia where female academics have reported ‘toning down’ curriculum content to avoid a backlash from students, particularly from Australian born, white, male students.
The Times Higher Education suggested that misogyny in higher education classrooms is ‘fuelled by online manosphere content’ and that any response requires “clearer boundaries, training and a willingness to confront harmful behaviour early”. In response to this trend the University of Essex was one of the first HE institutions in the UK to launch a policy explicitly to tackle misogyny in late 2024.
A survey by the British Medical Association in 2025 found these trends were also clear in medical schools with a report warning that gender-based discrimination is ‘dangerously normalised’. The survey found that two out of five female students had experienced sexual assault or harassment while at medical school and 73% of female medical students had experienced sexism at university with 69% experiencing it on clinical placement. In their review of misogyny in nursing, in a piece of research published this year, Jackson and colleagues suggest that the history of nursing has been ‘shaped by gendered, racialised and class-based hierarchies, sustained through traditionalism that reinforces gender stereotypes’. They suggest that medical misogyny can only be effectively challenged through a multi-pronged approach that challenges education, clinical guidelines and institutional policies.
They go onto to state that misogyny should be understood as a discourse that shapes “what can be said, what is considered legitimate, who is authorised to speak, under what conditions, and what is suppressed or deemed inappropriate”. This is normalised and reproduced to legitimise patriarchal power relations. If this is the case, simply setting up women’s health hubs, raising awareness amongst primary care practitioners or developing policies to manage discussions within the classroom are not sufficient to break down this system, a system that has been in place in various iterations for centuries.
There is the need to tackle both the education system that creates the healthcare workforce and the health system that shapes the spaces in which they work and within which patients seek care. Whilst clear strategies on managing classroom discussions and processes for reporting inappropriate behaviour are important they need to be adopted alongside analysis of the curriculum content, both explicit and implicit, and the clinical environments into which we send our students to practice their craft and learn to become the healthcare workforce of the future. Alongside this the structural misogyny inherent within both systems needs to be unpicked. This is no small task but the latest crisis might provide the impetus for the next stage in this work that has been going on for many decades now.
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Widening the focus on medical misogyny
by Sasha Scambler Apr 22, 2026In recent months there has been a renewed focus on ‘medical misogyny’ with numerous reports highlighting the routine dismissal of female patients seeking healthcare, particularly for reproductive health conditions. A report by the Women and Equalitiies Committee (UK) in 2024 found that despite the prevalence of these conditions, it can take women years to receive diagnoses and treatment, often leaving them in significant pain that impacts on life, education and work opportunities. The report highlighted a lack of awareness and training about these conditions amongst primary care practitioners and advocated for women’s health hubs to be rolled out more widely.
There is plenty of evidence that this is by no means the only area where women’s interactions with healthcare are problematic. A survey of almost 100,000 posts carried out by mumsnet found that half of the women on the site talking about healthcare in the past decade (between 2015-2025) felt that they had been ignored or not believed by an NHS professional because of their sex, whilst 64% had been told that pain they experienced was not real or was ‘in their heads’. The report highlighted the need for women to fight to be heard and acknowledged within the system.
But this is not new. From ancient Greek ideas of a womb wandering round the body causing various maladies in women if they were not kept pregnant, to medieval witch trials that targeted female healers and right through to modern controversies around endometriosis and autoimmune conditions, this issue has been researched and documented for many years. As Elinor Cleghorn highlights in her book ‘Unwell Women’ (2021) “Over centuries, women’s bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them.”
For those of us who teach in health faculties and help prepare the healthcare workers of the future there is an additional concern. Alongside the rise in awareness of medical misogyny there is a growth, or change, in the way that sexism is manifesting in the classroom. First identified as a trend in schools, the rise in misogynistic behaviour and attitudes towards both female teachers and students has been highlighted over the past few years. In the UK, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Whiteman suggested that the rise in incidents in schools reflects online trends with “significant world leaders and influencers being able to portray overtly misogynistic views, opinions and actions with no rebuttal”. This has now reached universities with the first of the Gen Z students reaching university age.
A study of 23,000 people, conducted across 29 countries, found stark differences between men from different generations, and between men and women, when it came to gender roles. 31% of Gen Z men (born between 1997 and 2012) agreed that wives should always obey their husbands, as did almost 1 in 5 (18%) of Gen Z women. This compared to 13% of Boomer (born between 1945 and 1964) men and 6% of women. Focusing on the Gen Z, student age, population, key findings included:
These attitudes towards gender roles can be seen in universities with a number of studies highlighting the impact of extreme, regressive, patriarchal views on students. One study in Canada highlighted the impact of such views on discussion within the classroom, citing the need to change the way topics are taught to counter attitudes learned within the manosphere. Similar concerns have been raised in Australia where female academics have reported ‘toning down’ curriculum content to avoid a backlash from students, particularly from Australian born, white, male students.
The Times Higher Education suggested that misogyny in higher education classrooms is ‘fuelled by online manosphere content’ and that any response requires “clearer boundaries, training and a willingness to confront harmful behaviour early”. In response to this trend the University of Essex was one of the first HE institutions in the UK to launch a policy explicitly to tackle misogyny in late 2024.
A survey by the British Medical Association in 2025 found these trends were also clear in medical schools with a report warning that gender-based discrimination is ‘dangerously normalised’. The survey found that two out of five female students had experienced sexual assault or harassment while at medical school and 73% of female medical students had experienced sexism at university with 69% experiencing it on clinical placement. In their review of misogyny in nursing, in a piece of research published this year, Jackson and colleagues suggest that the history of nursing has been ‘shaped by gendered, racialised and class-based hierarchies, sustained through traditionalism that reinforces gender stereotypes’. They suggest that medical misogyny can only be effectively challenged through a multi-pronged approach that challenges education, clinical guidelines and institutional policies.
They go onto to state that misogyny should be understood as a discourse that shapes “what can be said, what is considered legitimate, who is authorised to speak, under what conditions, and what is suppressed or deemed inappropriate”. This is normalised and reproduced to legitimise patriarchal power relations. If this is the case, simply setting up women’s health hubs, raising awareness amongst primary care practitioners or developing policies to manage discussions within the classroom are not sufficient to break down this system, a system that has been in place in various iterations for centuries.
There is the need to tackle both the education system that creates the healthcare workforce and the health system that shapes the spaces in which they work and within which patients seek care. Whilst clear strategies on managing classroom discussions and processes for reporting inappropriate behaviour are important they need to be adopted alongside analysis of the curriculum content, both explicit and implicit, and the clinical environments into which we send our students to practice their craft and learn to become the healthcare workforce of the future. Alongside this the structural misogyny inherent within both systems needs to be unpicked. This is no small task but the latest crisis might provide the impetus for the next stage in this work that has been going on for many decades now.