Women’s pain minimization in French healthcare, Digi Mart USA News (Paris, France): At the Etats généraux de la Douleur des femmes, held on October 19 at the French Ministry of Health, all participants documented a minimization of women’s pain. The 33 recommendations put forward to improve care raise the question of whether they will be enough to trigger a real shock to the system.
Audrey Aronica, president of the Association francophone pour vaincre la douleur (AFVD), has lived with an algie vasculaire de la face, a severe facial pain condition, since 2025. She told France Assos Santé that because she wears heels and lipstick, she is not believed or listened to by the medical profession.
She also described waiting a year for an appointment at a pain treatment center, only to be told to try hypnosis or jogging.
All speakers at the colloquium, held in Paris on October 19, described this minimization. Among them were Olivier Véran and François Braun, both former health ministers, Aurore Bergé, minister delegate for gender equality, and Catherine Azoulay, a gynecologist.
Over one year, a multidisciplinary national committee cross-referenced a review of scientific literature, more than 700 testimonies from women and the results of an OpinionWay survey for the agency Comm Santé, published in December 2025. The survey covered 1,000 women in France and 240 health professionals.
It identified five interlocking systemic failures: a cultural normalization of pain, a lack of sex-disaggregated data, biases in how health professionals recognize pain, social inequalities in access to care, and overly fragmented care pathways.
According to the same survey, 81% of health professionals said they had witnessed a situation in which women’s pain was minimized, compared with 40% who said the same about men. Yet the pain is real: 83% of women surveyed reported at least one painful episode in the previous 12 months, and for 58% of them it had a strong impact on their lives, compared with 45% of men.
Women’s pain goes well beyond menstrual pain or endometriosis, which are often the focus. Joint, neuropathic, chest and other pains affect women as they do men, but they do not always present with the same symptoms.
The problem is that women internalize this minimization and delay care: 40% have postponed a consultation for significant pain, compared with 32% of men, assuming it would pass.
Dr. Jean-Baptiste Caillard, president of the Conférence nationale des Unions régionales des professionnels de santé (URPS) and a cardiologist, noted that in medicine the male body has long served as the standard, with women’s pain considered afterward by comparison.
“The typical pain is that of the man. Others are called ‘atypical,’ and among them are women’s,” he said.
Solenn Le Henn, a health journalist at France Info and co-author of the book “Les négligées,” explained that women were historically excluded from clinical trials out of caution in the 1960s and 1970s, notably after the Distilbène scandal, and that women are still underrepresented by about 25% in clinical study protocols.
As a result, women experience between 50% and 75% more adverse drug effects than men when taking the same medications. Care for the same condition is also delayed.
For identical clinical files presenting chest pain, the case was judged a vital emergency in 62% of cases for a man, compared with 49% for a woman, and 42% for a Black woman, according to a study conducted at the Montpellier University Hospital among 1,563 health workers and published in January 2024.
Another troubling example is delayed treatment of heart attacks in women, which, according to a report from the Académie de médecine published in January 2025, results in female mortality 2.5 times higher. Women’s symptoms differ from men’s, including intense fatigue, high anxiety and palpitations.
Because of this lack of awareness, women may downplay these signs and health professionals may miss the correct diagnosis. Dr.
Caillard lamented that coronary disease is seen as a male condition, and that women are generally absent from cardiac rehabilitation programs because they do not feel concerned.
What is the main bias distorting clinical decisions? The familiar “it’s all in your head.” Women’s pain is often considered psychological in origin.
Éric Serra, a pain psychiatrist and president of the Société française d’étude et de traitement de la douleur (SFETD), said that women are perceived as emotional beings and are therefore listened to less than men, whose pain is assumed to be real and physiological. He called for work on this bias, including simulation tools increasingly used in general medicine.
This is one of five priorities set by the Etats généraux, broken down into 33 recommendations. François Braun, an emergency physician and former health minister, said that medical training teaches that pain is a symptom and that chronic pain should now be recognized as a disease in its own right, possibly a long-term condition.
The recommendations include developing initial training and pain assessment tools suited to general practice consultations, adapting the existing care pathway to women’s pain, extending care to all health professionals including pharmacists, who dispense painkillers, and developing local mediation for poorly relieved pain through patient representative commissions. Éric Serra noted that in the United States doctors routinely ask patients about their pain level and measure it alongside other vital signs such as temperature and blood pressure, and that this practice should also have a place in French consultations.
Améline Condamine, president of EndoFrance, said the recommendations could change everything if women who suffer hear them and do not give up, adding that women should not have to prove they are in pain, since pain is an individual, self-reported experience, and should be believed from the first consultation. Because endometriosis pain becomes chronic, 65% of women with the condition describe a negative impact on their work, with a sharp reduction in concentration, according to the EndoVie survey published in 2020.
Condamine said her organization increasingly speaks in companies to break the taboo, and that more human resources managers and even male executives are receptive.
Journalist Liane Courté, in her book “Les Mal Traitées, le scandale des violences médicales faites aux femmes” published in October by Flammarion, argues that “the vast majority of recent health scandals concern women,” citing Androcur, Mediator, Dépakine, PIP breast implants, Distilbène and Essure sterilization implants. Between 2022 and 2026 she conducted more than 280 interviews with women affected by these scandals across France, who describe severe pain and feeling insufficiently heard by their doctors.
Courté writes that women in France are often poorly treated by health professionals whose attitude is sometimes paternalistic, infantilizing or condescending. The book, 448 pages long, also recounts her own experience with endometriosis and describes an ultrasound during which she was not explained anything or asked for consent.
The book cites a figure from the Stop-VOG survey of June 2026: 45% of women say they have already experienced obstetric violence during their care.
