International Society of Critical Health Psychology

From mythology through philosophy and theology, the female body has long been constructed as unstable and dangerous. In Greek mythology, Pandora (the first woman) is created not as a gift, but as a punishment for Prometheus’s actions; a beautiful vessel who unleashes suffering upon the world, and whose descendants would continue this ‘beautiful evil’. Feminist interpretations of Pandora’s mythology have noted the symbolic nature of the pithos (later mistranslated as ‘box’), as womb-like, a container from which chaos emerges (Boulding, 2015). Pandora’s body is simultaneously alluring and destructive, establishing an early cultural foundation in which femininity itself becomes a site of risk and deceit.

These ideas were reinforced through early medical philosophy. Hippocratic gynaecology described the uterus as a ‘sentient’ organ, capable of moving around the body and causing illness, madness, or suffocation if not properly anchored through sex or childbirth (King, 2022). Aristotle later described women as ‘mutilated males’, biologically incomplete and ruled by emotion rather than reason (Merleau, 2003). These were not obscure ideas; they formed the foundations of Western medicine. These ideas were later absorbed into Christian theology, where women’s bodily suffering was moralised as punishment for Eve’s disobedience (Gottlieb, 2020). Across mythology, philosophy, and theology, is a consistent message: the female body is unreliable, irrational and in need of external control.

Yet to be published, a critical discourse analyses of these accounts highlight two recurring patterns (Young & Kirk [in prep]). The first is reproductive control, where fertility is prioritised over wellbeing. Women describe being denied treatment, particularly surgical options, on the basis of hypothetical future motherhood, even when their quality of life is severely compromised. The second pattern is epistemic injustice, where women’s reports of pain and disruption are reframed as exaggeration, emotionality, or irrationality. In these encounters, biomedical authority consistently outweighs lived experience.

Importantly, medical dismissal does not begin or end within the medical setting. In another analysis yet to be published, social narratives of the normalisation of menstrual suffering circulate through families, schools, workplaces, and cultural narrative, teaching women to normalise suffering long before they seek medical care (Young & Kirk [in prep]). This life-course pattern helps explain why menstrual disorders are so often under-recognised: when pain becomes synonymous with womanhood, it becomes structurally invisible. However, these narratives are not accepted. In online spaces, women use humour, anger, graphic storytelling and community validation to challenge normalisation and share counter-knowledge outside of the biomedical sphere.

This reminds us that healthcare is never just technical. It is cultural, historical, and deeply political. When women are dismissed in medical settings today, they are confronting legacies of Pandora, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and hysteria. Not as explicit references, but as foundational assumptions about who is credible and who has control. If we want more equitable healthcare, we must dismantle the foundations of medical knowledge itself and continue to centre the voices that medicine has historically worked hardest to silence.