Think to yourself about what the number one symptom of a heart attack is. I personally envision in my mind a man grasping at his chest and falling backwards, sitcom style. What we often don’t recognize is that while women could have chest pain during a heart attack, they also could simply have flu-like symptoms. The American Heart Association notes that while heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States, women often chalk up their symptoms to something simpler like the flu or even acid reflux.
Why is this? Part of the reason is that people don’t realize men and women can have the different symptoms for the same problem. Women are more likely to suffer from shortness of breath, back or jaw pain, even nausea and vomiting. Chest pain is still the most common symptom of a heart attack, but in combination with other symptoms, it can be hard to recognize that a heart attack is occurring. Years of research on only men have made these symptoms seem “atypical.” Knowing that there are a range of heart attack symptoms for women is vital to living a healthy life.
Even when women are brought to the hospital, gender matters. Women in the years after a heart attack are more likely to die with a male doctor than with a female doctor, according to researchers. The researchers did not find outright discrimination against female patients. This “gender gap” could be because their more “atypical” symptoms are dismissed as something else or that doctors themselves don’t recognize symptoms of a heart attack. It could simply be that women feel more comfortable explaining their symptoms to a female doctor. Whatever the reason, researchers also found that male doctors who work with female doctors can close their gender gap of their treatments.
Unfortunately, there’s half as many female doctors as male doctors in the United States. Plus, those female doctors are likely to earn around $100,000 less than male doctors. Many people in the profession recognize that we need more women in the field. There are pushes to get more women into faculty and administration roles at medical schools. There are pushes to get paid family leave, so women do not take a pay cut for having a child. There are pushes to close the pay gap between female and male doctors.
Even if someone doesn’t work in the medical field, they can help women persist in medicine. Women are more likely to get negative online ratings, with patients claiming they are judgmental, rude, or unfriendly. Before posting a review like that online, think for a second: Could bias be a part of the negative review? While it may seem small, it’s a difference that each one of us can make—just like knowing all the symptoms of a heart attack.
To read more about symptoms for women:
To read more about the gender gap in heart disease treatment: