Sev­er­al days ago, the UK gov­ern­ment clear­ly ac­knowl­edged that the Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) con­tin­ues to fail women and has now launched a strat­e­gy to tack­le “med­ical misog­y­ny.”

This phrase in­creas­ing­ly be­ing used in health­care dis­cus­sions, med­ical misog­y­ny, may sound provoca­tive or un­com­fort­able, but it re­flects some­thing many women recog­nise in­stant­ly.

Put sim­ply, it de­scribes a pat­tern where women’s symp­toms are dis­missed, min­imised, or mis­un­der­stood. And ac­cord­ing to re­cent re­ports from the UK, this is not rare—it is wide­spread.

A ma­jor par­lia­men­tary in­quiry found that women with com­mon con­di­tions such as en­dometrio­sis, ade­no­myosis and heavy men­stru­al bleed­ing are of­ten told their symp­toms are “nor­mal” or some­thing they should mere­ly en­dure. In many cas­es, this leads to se­vere de­lays in di­ag­no­sis, which can take years. In oth­ers, women are re­peat­ed­ly re­as­sured with­out prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion, on­ly to dis­cov­er much lat­er that their con­di­tion has pro­gressed.

This is both frus­trat­ing and harm­ful.

De­lays in di­ag­no­sis mean dis­ease pro­gres­sion, wors­en­ing pain, and some­times ir­re­versible con­se­quences, in­clud­ing in­fer­til­i­ty. Women have de­scribed see­ing sev­er­al doc­tors mul­ti­ple times be­fore be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, of­ten at a point when their con­di­tion has al­ready de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Women and Equal­i­ties Com­mit­tee (WEC) re­port pub­lished last month, gy­nae­co­log­i­cal and men­stru­al health had not been “suf­fi­cient­ly pri­ori­tised” by the UK gov­ern­ment. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing is how com­mon this ex­pe­ri­ence is. Around half of women re­port­ed feel­ing dis­missed or ig­nored by health­care pro­fes­sion­als, and near­ly two-thirds said they had been told their symp­toms were “nor­mal” or even “in their head.” It ac­knowl­edged that many women were left to “suck it up” and suf­fer in pain for years be­cause of a lack of aware­ness of women’s health con­di­tions.

At its core, this is not about in­di­vid­ual bad doc­tors. It re­flects some­thing more in­grained: a sys­tem his­tor­i­cal­ly built around male phys­i­ol­o­gy, where women’s pain—es­pe­cial­ly re­lat­ed to men­stru­a­tion or re­pro­duc­tion—has been nor­malised to the point of in­vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The con­se­quences ex­tend far be­yond phys­i­cal health. Chron­ic pain af­fects ed­u­ca­tion, ca­reers, re­la­tion­ships, mar­riages and men­tal well-be­ing. Some women be­gin to doubt them­selves. Oth­ers stop seek­ing help al­to­geth­er. The ero­sion of trust in the health­care sys­tem is the in­evitable re­sult.

The UK’s new­ly re­newed Women’s Health Strat­e­gy is now an at­tempt to con­front this di­rect­ly, and it does not shy away from the lan­guage. It ac­knowl­edges an “ap­palling cul­ture of med­ical misog­y­ny” and recog­nis­es that many women feel ig­nored and un­heard. Even the British health sec­re­tary Wes Street­ing has vowed to stop women from be­ing “gaslit” by the sys­tem meant to care for them.

Im­por­tant­ly, the strat­e­gy laid out is not just about iden­ti­fy­ing the prob­lem—it out­lines prac­ti­cal steps to ad­dress it. These in­clude im­prov­ing train­ing so health­care pro­fes­sion­als bet­ter un­der­stand fe­male-spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, re­duc­ing di­ag­nos­tic de­lays, and en­sur­ing that women are di­rect­ed to the right care ear­li­er.

The WEC re­port al­so showed that the gov­ern­ment’s use of so­cial me­dia to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion for women on men­stru­al health “has been poor” and falls “far short” of what is need­ed. Girls and women in­creas­ing­ly ac­cess health ad­vice from so­cial me­dia, de­spite some of it be­ing in­ac­cu­rate and po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful. As a re­sult, the new strat­e­gy has con­firmed that it is now a re­quire­ment for schools to teach men­stru­al and gy­nae­co­log­i­cal health in the cur­ricu­lum.

There is al­so a strong em­pha­sis on lis­ten­ing and plac­ing women’s voic­es at the cen­tre of care and even link­ing pa­tient feed­back to how ser­vices are eval­u­at­ed.

Oth­er changes may seem small but are still im­por­tant: en­sur­ing ad­e­quate pain re­lief for pro­ce­dures, im­prov­ing ac­cess to con­tra­cep­tion, and in­te­grat­ing menopause and men­stru­al health in­to rou­tine check-ups.

What can we learn from this and what can we do dif­fer­ent­ly?

First, that lis­ten­ing is not a “soft skill”—it is a clin­i­cal skill. Many of these de­lays be­gin at the point where a pa­tient is not ful­ly heard. Sec­ond­ly, that “com­mon” does not mean “nor­mal.” Just be­cause a con­di­tion is preva­lent does not mean suf­fer­ing should be ex­pect­ed or ac­cept­ed.

A men­stru­al ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme to en­sure girls are bet­ter equipped to recog­nise the dif­fer­ence be­tween healthy and un­healthy pe­ri­ods is cru­cial, as well as a re­design of clin­i­cal path­ways for fe­male health is­sues in or­der to speed up di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment.

In the end, change is pos­si­ble, but it re­quires aware­ness at every lev­el of the sys­tem. As doc­tors, we are trained to look for rare di­ag­noses and com­plex pre­sen­ta­tions. But some­times the most im­por­tant thing we can do is far sim­pler: to take a pa­tient se­ri­ous­ly the first time they speak.