At the Heart of the Matter

'At the Heart of the Matter: What Stems from Historic Gender Bias in Medicine.'

When you think of 'left-sided chest pain radiating to the arm and jaw', many would immediately imagine a heart attack. This is not the story for many women. Women often present with symptoms different to what is considered 'normal'. Whilst men are more likely to suffer from a heart attack, women are twice as likely to die from one - which could be attributed to this lack of awareness of women's presentation of heart attacks, leading to a delayed diagnosis of a condition where time is crucial.

Here you see a blossom with a diseased core, hidden away by layers of petals. Only as time moves forward and the layers are peeled back does this disease become more apparent. However, by then, the damage has spread and much of which cannot be reversed. This imagery tells the story of many women who have suffered heart attacks, whose condition had gone unrecognised for too long, leading to lifelong damage to the heart and disability, impacting their entire way of life.

Like the flower, there are also layers of complexity to this issue, which stem from the historic research based on understanding human health by using the male body as the default. This practice lead to an incomplete understanding of women's health.

Even though now we understand that this one-size fits all approach is flawed, these ideas, based on skewed historic research remain, and still have a negative effect on womens' well-being today.