Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Gabrielle Jackson, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.
This book is an eye-opener: a timely and powerful look at how our culture treats the pain and suffering of women.
Pain and Prejudice is a call to arms for women and their bodies.
Gabrielle, a journalist, was first diagnosed with endometriosis in 2001 and became interested in how women’s pain is treated in modern healthcare systems.
Pain and Prejudice is a crucial testament to how social taboos and medical ignorance keep women sick and in anguish. The stark reality is that women’s pain is not taken as seriously as men’s. Women are more likely to be disbelieved and denied treatment than men, even though women are far more likely to be suffering from chronic pain.
An incredibly important and powerful look at how our culture treats the pain and suffering of women in medical and social contexts. It’s a “strong polemic on the state of women’s health and healthcare in today’s world”.
Jackson is perfectly placed to expand on the anguish. “Women are in pain, all through their bodies; they’re in pain with their periods, and while having sex; they have pelvic pain, migraine, headaches, joint aches, painful bladders, irritable bowels, sore lower backs, muscle pain, vulval pain, vaginal pain, jaw pain, muscle aches. And many are so, so tired … But women’s pain is all too often dismissed, their illnesses misdiagnosed or ignored. In medicine, man is the default human being. Any deviation is atypical, abnormal, deficient.”
Even 14 years after being diagnosed with endometriosis, Gabrielle Jackson couldn’t believe how little had changed in the treatment and knowledge of the disease. In 2015, her personal story kick-started a worldwide investigation into the disease by The Guardian; thousands of women got in touch to tell their own stories and many more read and shared the material.
What began as one issue led Jackson to explore how women – historically and through to the present day – are under-served by the systems that should keep them happy, healthy and informed about their bodies.
In a powerful blend of personal memoir and impassioned testimony, Jackson confronts the private concerns and questions women face regarding their health and medical treatment. Pain and Prejudice, finally, explains how we got here, and where we need to go next.
