Samulowitz and her colleagues found a particular unwillingness on the part of medical professionals to believe women’s pain reports for conditions without obvious physiological markers, such as fibromyalgia (which predominantly affects women).19 Overall, when it came to such conditions, “women’s narratives about their experiences with clinicians showed…how hard they have had to work to be taken seriously, believed, and understood in medical encounters.”20 And, in general, “women with pain can be perceived as hysterical, emotional, complaining, not wanting to get better, malingerers, and
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