If, for twenty years, the management of pain has made progress in France, remains that the complaints of women are still too often minimized. For some doctors, their physical suffering is either imaginary or "in the order of things". Many people say that "it is in the head", or that it is "normal that they suffer, since their body is used to the pains of childbirth ". Medicine still projects on them two contradictory images: that of the hysteric and that of the victim of a body "naturally" devoted to suffering; that of the chochotte and that of the woman who endures pain since the dawn of time. This sexist approach is all the more serious as women suffer far more than men: 150 times more migraines, 60 times more joint pain, 40 times more cervical pain, stomach pain and fibromyalgia.

"It's not clear why women have much more chronic pain than men," says Dr. Florentin Clere, a member of the French Society for the Study and Treatment of Pain ⁽¹⁾ . It is thought that there are three risk factors: estrogen, nerve pathways that are less sensitive to opiates than men, and the emotional factor. Research is underway on the differences in the ways of pain between men and women. We proceed by brain imaging, but we have not found anything concrete yet. Fibromyalgia is particularly representative of doctors' discomfort with female pain . This disease affects about 2% of the population, 90% of whom are women. We do not understand much about it, and doctors are not trained to deal with syndromes they do not understand. For them, medicine is "a symptom, a treatment, a cure". When diseases are more complex, some doctors can defend themselves from their helplessness by accusing the woman of somatizing a psychic problem. "

Fortunately, there are more and more structures for the study and treatment of chronic pain, at least one per department ⁽²⁾ . The doctors who work there have received a two-year training in pain. Things are finally starting to move.

1. www.sfetd.com.

2. Check with your doctor or the hospital center in your area.