'Women have been woefully neglected': does medical science have a gender problem?

Women's symptoms are ignored and their health problems are under-researched. What's going wrong?

When Lynn Enright had a hysteroscopy to examine the inside of the womb, her searing pain was dismissed by medical professionals. She only understood why when she started working on her book on female anatomy, Vagina: A Re-education. She was looking for research on pain and women's health, only to be shocked by how little data she found.

It wasn't just the topic of pain that was poorly researched. The lack of evidence was a problem she encountered time and time again, which is no surprise when you look at the research gap: less than 2.5% of publicly funded research is dedicated solely to reproductive health, despite the fact that one in three women in the UK will suffer from a reproductive or gynaecological health problem. There is five times more research into erectile dysfunction, which affects 19% of men, than into premenstrual syndrome, which affects 90% of women.