Is Gender Bias Fueling Women’s Medical Negligence Claims?

Michele Mirman | Medical Malpractice | October 24, 2025

For all the progress we’ve made in science and medicine, we women still face alarming disparities in medical care that result in serious, poor health outcomes for us. Why?

I am Michele Mirman, and I have spent decades seeing up close what my clients have gone through because of the terrible impact gender biases in medicine have on women. I’m not talking about inequality. I am talking about how outdated, male-centric medical and pharmaceutical research and treatment applied to women lead to serious medical mistakes that women pay a horrible price for.

What Is Gender Bias in Medicine?

Gender bias in medicine takes many forms. Sometimes it’s subtle: doctors, like our society in general, assume that women are more emotional, that our symptoms are psychosomatic, that our pain is “just part of being female.” Other times, gender bias results in gender-based procedural decisions by medical care providers: doctors fail to order testing for us, while male patients receive intensive evaluations. It’s not always intentional, but even if it’s unconscious, this bias can have devastating results.

For generations, medical and pharmaceutical research and education were built around a male model of the human body. Women were simply not part of many clinical trials, meaning that much of what we call “standard” medicine relates to men. That means that drugs, diagnostic criteria, and procedures are wrong for us. And, even though it’s no secret that testing was done only on men, doctors nonetheless will still prescribe particular medicines, in specific doses, and diagnose conditions based upon criteria that have nothing to do with us women.

I continue to see the ripple effects of this bias play out time and again when I speak with my clients. Women are more likely than men to have their pain downplayed, their symptoms dismissed, or their concerns labeled as “emotional” or “stress-related.” This can have dire consequences.

When a provider labels a woman’s persistent pain as anxiety or attaches significance only to test results that fit a narrow male-based model, real disease can be overlooked.

As Duke Health researchers point out in their paper Recognizing and Addressing Unintended Gender Bias in Patient Care, bias often appears in small, everyday decisions: how symptoms are interpreted, how tests are prioritized, and how care is documented. Doctors, especially under time pressure, may rely on stereotypes, leading them to misdiagnosis and delay treatment. Result?  poor outcomes for women.

When “Women’s Problems” are Misdiagnosed

Women’s health complaints are still too often met with a shrug. Many are told their fatigue is “hormonal,” their pain is “psychological,” or that their symptoms are “normal for women their age.” This pattern has a name: diagnostic overshadowing, where serious conditions are missed because a doctor stops investigating after finding an easy, gender explanation.

A 2020 review from the Patient Safety Learning Hub called gender bias “a threat to women’s health.” Women are more likely to be misdiagnosed, particularly with heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and chronic pain conditions like endometriosis.

Take cardiovascular disease, for example. Women often present with symptoms different from men’s, such as nausea, jaw pain, or fatigue, but are less likely to receive immediate treatment for heart attacks.

In reproductive health, conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) or endometriosis can take seven to ten years to diagnose because women’s pain is normalized rather than investigated.

A Brief Look at History: The Women’s Health Equality Act 

The conversation around gender bias in medicine isn’t new. We’ve been talking about this for over 35 years. The Women’s Health Equality Act of 1993 addressed the lack of gender inclusion in medical research and highlighted inequalities in conditions such as breast and ovarian cancer.

The Act required federal health agencies to consider women’s needs in research and data collection. It emphasized that conditions unique to women or that affected them differently deserved dedicated funding and study.

Decades later, we still don’t have equality. Women are included in clinical trials, but authoritative studies confirm that our symptoms are still often analyzed through a male-centric lens and diagnostic guidelines and medication dosages are frequently based on research conducted primarily on men. Result? We are misdiagnosed or not diagnosed, improperly treated or not treated at all. 

The Everyday Impact of Bias

When a medical professional’s bias determines diagnosis or treatment and we are hurt as a result, that medical professional can be held accountable in a court of law.

Here’s how gender bias feeds into negligence:

Delayed Diagnosis: A doctor hears a woman’s chest pain as anxiety and does not order ECGs; a woman’s neurological complaints are labeled hormonal rather than imaged. Delay leads to worse outcomes.

Misdiagnosis or Underdiagnosis: a doctor downplays a woman’s symptoms and although she in fact has heart disease, she receives less aggressive diagnostic protocols than men with similar profiles.

Failure to Order Needed Tests: Despite clear risk factors, like family history, dense tissue, or genetic suspicion, bias leads a clinician to withhold advanced imaging or genetic testing, when protocol indicates they should be considered.

Uninformed Consent and Lack of Disclosure: When doctors fail to explain known risks, particularly those more likely affecting women, they violate the principle of informed consent. Gender bias is known to contribute to what is left unsaid.

Institutional Patterns: Hospitals, clinics, and medical systems perpetuate bias through inadequate policies, training, oversight, or incentive structures. That systemic failure can make institutions liable, not just individual doctors.

What Can You Do?

• Ask questions.
• Request explanations for test results and treatment decisions.
• Ask your doctor why he is not giving you particular tests, specific medicines, or recommending certain procedures.
• Keep records of appointments, symptoms, and medications.
• Get a copy of your medical records and test results.
• Get a second opinion

Medical Gender Bias Adversely Affects Millions of Women. 

Gender bias affects how we’re treated, our quality of life and how long we live.

I’ve heard the stories of too many women whose complaints and symptoms were ignored, whose pain was minimized, and whose cancer as a result went undiagnosed for too long.

If only someone had listened earlier, she would have had a chance at a different outcome. 

If you believe you’ve been harmed by medical negligence, let’s talk about it and see what we can do. Call me, Michele Mirman, Esq. at 212-227-4000 or contact me through my website, www.mirmanlawyers.com