A lack of knowledge about female anatomy and health has led to 'medical gaslighting', resulting in misdiagnoses for some women.

The term was coined to describe the unequal treatment of women by healthcare professionals.

Dr Marieke Bigg is the author of This Won’t Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women and she joined The Anton Savage Show to discuss how and why women seem to have different experiences of healthcare.

"The starting premise really is that there's societal power imbalances, which we all know, that shape medicine and the ideas we hold about bodies", she explained.

"This determines who is heard, which bodies matter and which people's needs are prioritised in medicine."

"This idea that the medical knowledge we have is gender neutral is actually not true."

Gynecology

According to Dr Bigg, the majority of the conclusions about human health applies to male bodies and not necessarily female bodies.

"A lot of the areas that matter predominantly to female bodies have just been marginalised, excluded or dismissed within medicine", she said.

Gynecology, "a field very closely associated with women", gets less funding for research.

"But also it's not taken as seriously scientifically", she said.

"In the past it wouldn't have been an area that is considered to be as scientifically advanced, somewhere you really want to make your career as a scientist."

A lack of researchers means a lack of findings, knowledge and new technology.

For example, it can take "a really long time" to get a diagnosis for endometriosis, which is said to affect at least 10% of women.

Heart attacks

Cancer research and cardiology are fields that require more knowledge about women's health, according to Dr Bigg.

These fields "tend to form around the needs of male bodies rather than female bodies".

"In cardiology, for example, heart attack it's now coming to light more doesn't present in the same way for women as it does for men", she said.

"So the classic chest pain might not appear for a woman, so she might have more symptoms that are very similar to the symptoms we associate with menopause - sweating, hot flashes, this kind of thing."

"Actually often the symptoms of heart attack in women are mistake for menopause."

Listen back to the full conversation here.

Main image shows a doctor having a consultation with a patient. Picture by: Aleksandr Davydov/Alamy Stock Photo