Disabilities common to both females and males, especially developmental disabilities, often favor male patients in ease of diagnosis. Studies done on both autism [6] [7] [8] and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [9] [10] suggest that "masculine defaults" [11] in healthcare influence diagnosticians by creating a mental platonic ideal diagnostic case, which often excludes women who present the same symptoms as men. [10]
Interactions with racism
Stemming from Medical racism, there is a common phenomenon experienced by people of color who seek medical attention where their bodies are believed to be fundamentally different than those of white people by white people who work in medical fields. [12] One such particularly pervasive belief is the idea that "blacks have thicker skin than do white people, [12] " which leads to the idea that Black patients have a higher innate pain tolerance than white patients. [13]
Similarly to the seen-above idea of the male default, there exists a parallel white-as-default [14] which influences medical practice. Medical devices such as the Pulse oximeter are calibrated to white skin, causing them to read improperly when used on Black patients. [15] Diagnostic tests, such as kidney function screens, read Black patients as having higher risk when tested. [16] Often, medical training itself is oriented around light skin as a standard. [16] These and additional factors, when amplified across an entire anti-Black medical system, end up treating Blackness itself as a chronic condition. [16]
Black patients have described the way their concerns about themselves and their family members are dismissed by the medical profession as Gaslighting. [17] For example, ALS, on average, is diagnosed later in Black patients than equivalent white ones, [18] if not missed entirely. [17] Studies have found systematic barriers to breast cancer diagnosis in Black women. [19] Ethnic minority patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia report higher levels of sleep and mood disturbances than white patients. [20]
In following with the concept of misogynoir, Black female patients, explained by intersectional feminism, suffer both from racism and sexism within healthcare and often find that the combination of the two synthesizes into something separate from each on their own. College-educated Black mothers are nearly six times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications, and as the rate of fatal complications decrease in white patients correlating with education level, it stays nearly the same among Black patients. [21]
Significant parts of the profession of Gynaecology are reliant on information that was obtained by using the bodies of Black women as testing equipment, only to dispose of them after the information had been gleaned, often without medical treatment. [22] J. Marion Sims, often referred to with the epithet "Father of Gynecology", was notorious for operating on enslaved women without anesthesia, a practice common among medical professionals at the time. [22]
