How Healthcare’s Gender Bias Created a Booming Wellness Industry
Photo Credit: A bottle of hemp oil is shown. The wellness industry has clearly made its biggest inroads among women. That may partly be due to the shortcomings of the medical profession. Unsplash / @demip101
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Ask any woman, and she’ll likely tell you she’s been told by a medical doctor, either implicitly or explicitly, that “it’s all in your head.” The medical industry’s tendency to dismiss many of the health concerns of female patients has been a big factor in the rise of the wellness industry.
The wellness industry has clearly made its biggest inroads among women. That may partly be due to the shortcomings of the medical profession, which has traditionally been known to attribute their health concerns to hormones, depression, or “female problems.”
Scientific studies have shown that women are often treated like second-class citizens when it comes to medical care. For many years, research into diseases that mainly affected women lagged, and women were often not included in general medical research trials. Many other studies show women are taken less seriously than men when it comes to pain treatment.
These are just some of the reasons why the gap in trust in the healthcare system between the genders is getting wider. According to new data from the Edelman Trust Barometer, only 53 percent of women trust the healthcare industry, compared to 69 percent of men.
That lack of trust among women has opened the door for the wellness world, made up of legit practitioners, c
