Gabrielle Jackson is an editor and writer for The Guardian in Australia. Pain and Prejudice addresses how the medical system has discriminated against women. There’s overlap with two other recent books, Sex Matters by Alyson J. McGregor and Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbury. Indeed, parts of Jackson’s book are reminiscent of older feminist books on women and illness such as Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady (1985). 

There is a chapter on the female reproductive system and how medical science has neglected women’s bodies. Jackson mentions the work of artist Sophia Wallace and her sculpture Cliteracy. There are also chapters on menstruation and menopause, hysteria, and the problems women face in their sexual lives. The book includes social commentary and accounts of her meetings with doctors and scholars. There’s also writing about her own life, including both her experience as a journalist and as a patient. Jackson has had a variety of medical problems.

While the early chapters are on a diverse set of topics, the later ones get to the issue of pain in the title. 

It is here that she gets to discuss autoimmune disorders and chronic pain. She builds on the perspectives of the earlier chapters to explain the sexism of medicine in its approach to conditions such as endometriosis. Jackson chronicles how women get ignored, misdiagnosed, get inappropriate treatment, and are sometimes left to die. 

Jackson also addresses how race and class factor into the treatment of women. She is educated, and married to a doctor and is at an advantage in knowing how to demand the treatment she needs. She also lives in Australia which recognizes a right to health care. But many women have less privilege. Intersectional factors make a difference to women’s experience in the health care system. 

The distinctive value of Pain and Prejudice is for those concerned about women who have the “ten overlapping chronic pain conditions.”

• Endometriosis
• Vulvodynia
• Chronic migraine
• Chronic tension-type headaches
• Chronic fatigue syndrome
• Fibromyalgia
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Chronic lower back pain
• Temporo-mandibula disorder

Jackson does not offer any easy solutions but she does give suggestions both at the individual and the social levels for how to address the sexism of the medical system. The book is a bit of a mixed bag, going in different directions, mixing the personal and the academic, circling around subjects rather than providing a linear argument. But the writing is accessible and Jackson’s voice comes through clearly.  Pain and Prejudice does complement the other recent books on the sexism of modern health care. 

Christian Perring is President of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry.

Categories: General

Keywords: women, chronic pain, sexism