Regarding the difference in prevalence between chronic pain in men and women, there’s a tendency, at least within the US medical system, to dismiss women’s pain more often than men. A good example of this is pain resulting for endometriosis, which is often dismissed or downplayed by doctors as “just bad period cramps” rather than a serious source of chronic pain. So too for many other sources of pain unique to women.
I don’t have a source, but my experience is that most of this seems to be due to a variant of the typical mind fallacy: male doctors and some female doctors have never experienced similar pain and so fail to appreciate its severity and sympathize with it less on the margin, being more likely to recommend more conservative treatment rather than more aggressively try to remediate the pain.
Regarding the difference in prevalence between chronic pain in men and women, there’s a tendency, at least within the US medical system, to dismiss women’s pain more often than men. A good example of this is pain resulting for endometriosis, which is often dismissed or downplayed by doctors as “just bad period cramps” rather than a serious source of chronic pain. So too for many other sources of pain unique to women.
I don’t have a source, but my experience is that most of this seems to be due to a variant of the typical mind fallacy: male doctors and some female doctors have never experienced similar pain and so fail to appreciate its severity and sympathize with it less on the margin, being more likely to recommend more conservative treatment rather than more aggressively try to remediate the pain.