When women are not at every level of medicine reaffirming the seriousness of what female patients are saying, it is women who die from the silence. Medical Statistics Are Misleading These medical treatment patterns fly in the face of statistics that show women are the primary users of the medical system, are more likely to have tests ordered, more likely to be prescribed something, and are operated on more. According to the 1987 National Hospital Discharge Survey and Annual Summary, caesarean section and hysterectomy were listed as the third and sixth most common surgical procedures done in the United States. All told, of the top 20 most common surgical procedures, six are performed exclusively on women. And due to the lack of women in decision-making positions, no clarion call is being sounded to find alternatives to these invasive procedures.
Women are also more likely to be prescribed sedatives, tranquilizers, or anti-anxiety agents.
Twenty years later, in a 1990 study, scientists found that the traits most likely to increase one's chance of being prescribed a sedative were to be white, divorced or separated, older, and female. The need for women in decision-making positions in medicine is critical. For too long, women's health has been ignored, their symptoms dismissed, and their biological differences, used in other fields as a reason for women's exclusion, trivialized as not worth studying. Copyright 1995, The Feminist Majority Foundation and New Media Publishing Inc.