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Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick

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Editor of the award-winning site Feministing.com, Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with doctors and researchers, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today.

In Doing Harm, Dusenbery explores the deep, systemic problems that underlie women’s experiences of feeling dismissed by the medical system. Women have been discharged from the emergency room mid-heart attack with a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, while others with autoimmune diseases have been labeled “chronic complainers” for years before being properly diagnosed. Women with endometriosis have been told they are just overreacting to “normal” menstrual cramps, while still others have “contested” illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia that, dogged by psychosomatic suspicions, have yet to be fully accepted as “real” diseases by the whole of the profession.

An eye-opening read for patients and health care providers alike, Doing Harm shows how women suffer because the medical community knows relatively less about their diseases and bodies and too often doesn’t trust their reports of their symptoms. The research community has neglected conditions that disproportionately affect women and paid little attention to biological differences between the sexes in everything from drug metabolism to the disease factors—even the symptoms of a heart attack. Meanwhile, a long history of viewing women as especially prone to “hysteria” reverberates to the present day, leaving women battling against a stereotype that they’re hypochondriacs whose ailments are likely to be “all in their heads.” 

Offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its sometimes catastrophic consequences, Doing Harm is a rallying wake-up call that will change the way we look at health care for women.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Ever since the centuries of burning women healers as witches, because they taught women how to govern our own bodies, thus to control reproduction—the medical world hasn’t included all of humanity. Doing Harm shows what is left to be done, and directs both women and men toward healing.” — Gloria Steinem

“Maya Dusenbery’s exhaustively researched book is equal parts infuriating and energizing. No woman will see the medical establishment, and perhaps even more profound, her own body, the same way after reading it. In a just world, it would be required reading in medical schools from this day forward.”  — Courtney E. Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

“Maya Dusenbery brings new life to one of the most urgent yet under-discussed feminist issues of our time. Anyone who cares about women’s health needs to read this book.”  — Jessica Valenti, author of Sex Object

“Dusenbery challenges a new generation of women and practitioners to fight for medical equity—shinning a harsh light on the sex bias that pervades every level of medicine. It’s outrageous that such malignant neglect exists more than two decades after the government acknowledged the gaps in knowledge about women’s health.”  — Leslie Laurence, co-author of Outrageous Practices

“In this groundbreaking book, Maya shows how the same forces that hold women back in society more broadly lead to sub-par medical care and inadequate attention to health issues that impact women. Every doctor, scientist, health care provider and researcher should read this book. And so should every woman.” — Jill Filipovic, author of The H-Spot

“Doing Harm is a deeply researched and very readable exploration of the systematic mistreatment of women in our medical system—and how even those with the best intentions perpetuate it. This book is an eye-opener; may it also be a call for real, sustained change.” — Kate Harding, author of Asking For It and co-editor of Nasty Women

“An intensive, timely spotlight…Within an organized, well-balanced combination of scientific and social research and moving personal stories, Dusenbery makes a convincing case for the need for drastic industry reform and clinical refinement.” — Kirkus

“Dusenbery’s excellent book makes the sexism plaguing women’s health care hard to ignore…skillfully interweaving history, medical studies, current literature, and hard data to produce damning evidence that women wait longer for diagnoses, receive inadequate pain management, and are often told they are imagining symptoms that are taken seriously in men.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Editor’s Choice by the New York Times” —

“As seen on FRESH AIR” —

“an antidote to the isolation and maddening self-doubt that this all-too-common dismissal can impose. Her careful evidence answers the uncomfortable question that so often niggles in the doctor’s office: ‘Am I getting lesser care because I’m a woman?’” — Ms. Magazine

“well researched, wonderfully truculent…” — NYT Daily

“Doing Harm methodically and thoroughly lays out an indictment of the medical systems that still largely discount the experiences of women both individually and collectively. Doing Harm demands nothing short of system-wide change, starting with a call to providers at the most basic level” — Rewire

“Dusenbery, who was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, masterfully takes down the wide-reaching systemic gender bias in science and medicine that prevents doctors from truly hearing female patients.” — Health.com

“In her new book, Dusenbery provides a comprehensive and much-needed look at how sexism in the medical field is hurting women. Much of the discrepancy in treatment stems from the “knowledge gap,” which Dusenbery writes about in depth” — Pacific Standard

“Doing Harm demonstrates persuasively that subconscious gender-bias in medicine is very real and pervasive for women of all backgrounds, as doctors continue to apply a “one-size-fits-all” method of diagnosis and medical evaluation to their women patients.” — Pacific Standard

“Dusenbery peels back the sick layers of America’s paternal healthcare system. She plays both patient and journalist, seamlessly combining history, research, and interviews into an easily digestible must-read. 5/5” — Bust Magazine

“Dusenbery digs deeper into the issue, exploring the way gender bias in medicine often leaves women struggling for proper care.” — Tonic - VICE

“the medical establishment has a poor history of taking women’s health issues seriously —a history that Feministing editor Dusenbery takes on with full force in her new book” — Harpers Bazaar

“Through interviews with patients, doctors, and experts as well as a deep cultural analysis, Dusenbery presents a horrifying picture of what it means to be a woman who’s dismissed by her doctors.” — Bitch Media

“Dusenbery’s book, based on two years of research into a host of conditions, exposes the systemic causes of these disparities and provides critically relevant information for the public—and for those in medicine, psychology, and the research sciences.” — Greater Good Science Center

“In Doing Harm, Dusenbery explores how biases and sexism in medicine lead to harmful outcomes for women.” — Popular Science

“Dusenbery says these experiences fit into a larger pattern of gender bias in medicine. Her new book, Doing Harm, makes the case that women’s symptoms are often dismissed and misdiagnosed” — NPR - FRESH AIR

“Her new book is all about how women receive sub-par medical care because the medical community knows comparatively less about their bodies and diseases and too often doesn’t trust women’s reports of their own symptoms” — WNYC The Brian Lehrer Show

“Maya Dusenbery explores how medicine often leaves women on the periphery of real medical advancement. She explores the horrific reality of how medical practitioners and academic researchers completely dismiss women.” — Marie Claire

“Dusenbery writes about women’s pain and illnesses being overlooked because of their menstrual cramps, menopause, even entering motherhood.” — Dame Magazine

“In her book, Dusenbery traces how women are overlooked in every corner of illness, from autoimmune diseases to chronic pain (which disproportionately affects women and includes everything from irritable bowel syndrome to migraines to arthritis).” — The Cut

“Maya Dusenbery’s book, Doing Harm, explains how women’s health issues have historically been dismissed—and what we can do about it now.” — Broadly

“Doing Harm is a fearless account of the incompetence of our culture when it comes to treating women properly. Dusenbery writes about the institutional systems that are against women—from philosophy to pharmacy to popular culture—in an accessible, engaging, and organized narrative.” — The Rumpus

“Maya Dusenbery has added immensely to the literature on women’s health.” — NY Journal of Books

From the Back Cover

Editor of the award-winning site Feministing.com, Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with doctors and researchers, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today. 

In Doing Harm, Dusenbery explores the deep, systemic problems that underlie women’s experiences of feeling dismissed by the medical system. Women have been discharged from the emergency room mid-heart attack with a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, while others with autoimmune diseases have been labeled “chronic complainers” for years before being properly diagnosed. Women with endometriosis have been told they are just overreacting to “normal” menstrual cramps, while still others have “contested” illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia that, dogged by psychosomatic suspicions, have yet to be fully accepted as “real” diseases by the whole of the profession. 

An eye-opening read for patients and health care providers alike, Doing Harm shows how women suffer because the medical community knows relatively less about their diseases and bodies and too often doesn’t trust their reports of their symptoms. The research community has neglected conditions that disproportionately affect women and paid little attention to biological differences between the sexes in everything from drug metabolism to the disease factors—even the symptoms of a heart attack. Meanwhile, a long history of viewing women as especially prone to “hysteria” reverberates to the present day, leaving women battling against a stereotype that they’re hypochondriacs whose ailments are likely to be “all in their heads.” 

Offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its sometimes catastrophic consequences, Doing Harm is a rallying wake-up call that will change the way we look at health care for women.

Review:

4.9 out of 5

98.18% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative and Engaging Read

L.L. · July 28, 2024

I really enjoyed this book as a woman who has struggled with being diagnosed with chronic illnesses.

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the most important book of this decade

j. · August 8, 2018

This book is absolutely a must read for anyone who is sick, in healthcare, or needs to learn how the healthcare system is so broken it leaves women more sick than they started. There are compelling anecdotes that I felt deep in my soul and tore at every ounce of empathy and compassion I have because I’ve been through this horrible system since I was a young child. This book is incredibly well researched and sourced, and I believe it should be read by every pre-med, nursing, public health, etc. student so that they can see how they can exacerbate problems or solve them. I listened to the audiobook through my library and then came back to buy the book because I think it’s so important, I’ll read it over and over again. If you’re sick and trying to find answers: read this book. If you’re in the healthcare industry: read this book. If you have a loved one who counts on you to be their advocate: read this book. If you have compassion for the struggles sick women go through: read this book. This isn’t a book that will cure your ails or be a miracle in terms of changing the path your sickness takes, but it will change your life in the sense that you’ll realize that you aren’t alone, you aren’t crazy, you can do this, and with all the systemic oppression sick women have experienced, it’s time to raise our voices to be heard and treated with dignity and respect, even when the answers don’t seem “right”. This book shows how doctors have silenced and shut millions of sick women down, so much so that they’ve missed many important diseases and diagnoses that affect millions. This book doesn’t read like dry, medical non-fiction; I found it riveting from the start. The statistics are bleak and sad; the anecdotes are heart wrenching, but this book was written with those of us in mind who will hold onto it and say “wow, look how many women have had similar struggles” and how our doctors can learn to communicate, listen, and learn better through their patient’s experiences. I HIGHLY recommend this book for anyone and everyone that has ever spent more than 2 minutes in a medical facility.

5.0 out of 5 stars As a physician, I can say with experience that she speaks the truth

L. · December 1, 2023

This journalist shares her own experience with delayed diagnosis of an autoimmune condition which got her interested in studying the experiences of other women. What she found is eye-opening, and has been confirmed over and over again in many a medium by hundreds of women who have responded to shocking stories, sharing remarkably similar experiences of being gaslit, adding to the uncertainty of being undiagnosed and often left facing painful or even disabling symptoms.The truth is that women get more autoimmune and other difficult-to-diagnose diseases because the manifestations are often different from what is taught in textbooks based on research done largely on men.New diseases are emerging all the time, and they too seem more often to be occurring in women. And when physicians cannot easily diagnose a condition, it is easier for them to dismiss in women both because we typically defer to authority and then begin to doubt ourselves. This is especially true in painful conditions. Women's pain is minimized, dismissed, and undertreated. Dusenbery shows again and again how frequently this happens, and explains what you can do in your own case, and systemically to begin to change the paradigm.

4.0 out of 5 stars LOTS of info. Writing isn't great.

A. · July 7, 2023

Anyone who wants to write a book on any of the subjects found in this book will be a happy person because the data is solid and well-laid. But it's hard to read. Still, a welcome resource.

5.0 out of 5 stars Be prepared to get angry

m. · August 15, 2018

This is an excellent read for anyone who is unaware of the level of bias in the medical industry.I'm unfortunately all too aware. My mother had a hysterectomy at age 27 because doctors refused to believe that periods could be unusually painful. When a doctor finally did listen, and wanted to do a scope to see what was going on inside, she woke up to find out she'd had a full hysterectomy. There was so much endometriosis that her ovaries were fused to her intestines. She demanded that I be taken seriously when I started having symptoms (endometriosis is hereditary), so I didn't have to experience the same.Doctors are human. We seem to forget that. This book gives an excellent history of the medicine, including the women who would treat people before conventional doctors existed. It's fascinating to see women getting shut out of a field that they actually had success in, in favor of bloodletting and enemas, because that's all "doctors" knew to do at the time. It hurts to read so many accounts of women who nearly died (and I can't even imagine how many have) due to the negligence of their doctors.

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book!

E. · November 17, 2023

Points to the dysfunction of the medical community and the very well documented and dismissive way in which women’s medical conditions, needs, and medical experiences are minimized and ignored. Men are treated and their pain is treated. Women are not treated, not taken seriously, and are suffering. Attitudes toward women are dismissive, derogatory, and misogynistic by physicians (both male and female). It reflects the failure of the medical institutions that train physicians and researchers. The medical community has failed us and will continue to do so because of entrenched bias and sustained ignorance.

A very compelling book!!

R. · October 13, 2019

The author has done an amazing job with her compelling research and presentation of the eye opening realities and obstacles women face obtaining medical services for difficult-to-diagnose or unexplainable health issues. Doctors in every branch of medicine should be required to read this book.

#harmedmetoo (?) - spot on, a brilliant book

Q. · April 30, 2018

Spot on, and let's have #harmedmetoo to expose just how many women (and men) have been failed by the worldwide psychosomatic/somatization agenda and dogma that refuses to listen to and believe particularly women’s suffering while blissfully ignoring unacceptably high misdiagnosis rates across the board. For too long women have thought that they were just ‘unlucky’ to have been misdiagnosed or ignored by their doctors, or have wondered what they were doing wrong to not be believed about their symptoms.All women should read this book, and any interested fair-minded male partners, husbands, fathers, brothers and sons too. All politicians should be made to read this book. And all prospective medical students should have to demonstrate that they have read this book before they are accepted into medical school. This systemic disregard and abuse of women MUST stop, and we must no longer allow ourselves to be treated as second-class healthcare citizens.On page 100, Maya, by quoting Lipowski, lists some of the derogatory labels that have been applied to those patients, predominantly women, who have been described as having somatization or ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ or ‘MUS’ – “ ‘crocks’, ‘gomers’, ‘turkeys’, ‘hypochondriacs’, ‘hysterics’ and ‘the worried well’ ”. She also draws attention to the notorious ‘heartsink’ branding. Not listed is the expression ‘stomach-churners’ which I suspect could be gaining popularity in the UK since a remark that was made by one GP to ‘qualitative’ researchers was selected by a ‘MUS’ proponent and published in a British GP journal. So entrenched is this prejudice and dogma that female doctors will mete it out on their fellow women patients.And then there is the problem of someone who has presided over the psychosomatic agenda in the UK, seemingly sitting on unacceptably high misdiagnosis rates made evident by their own research while at the same time apparently not especially concerned to see all MUS patients in the IAPT programme labelled with ‘somatization disorder’.I sincerely hope that Maya will come to the UK to investigate the situation here for female patients within the NHS. We desperately need her to build on this great accomplishment. I suspect that there is more than enough material over here for her to write another illuminating book.

One of the most important books written that you’ve probably never heard of…

D. · July 9, 2021

OMG.This book sums up everything I’ve ever thought , said or experienced as a women treated by so called healthcare professionals male or female ( predominantly male) I can only read a page at a time as I get so mad. Well written and gut wrenching. If ever you cared about a woman ever in your life you’d have to read this book. I wish I’d written it but not too ,as it should never have had to have been necessary to write it in the first place. And I wish women the world over were not suffering so much at the hands of those that say that they care for them.

Five Stars

A.C. · March 14, 2018

A must read for women to understand how badly the medical system is out of sync with women.

Great

A. · June 6, 2019

Great

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Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick

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