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Getty ImagesKatie Buckleitner
Sexism in the perception of pain is a well-known and documented problem: men and women who complain of the same type and level of pain are treated differently by health care providers, depending on their gender. Blah blah, "boys do not cry, women are weak", bullshit, blah blah.
A new study published in January in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology Disturbingly, gender-based biases on pain tolerance do not apply only to adults, but to children as young as five years old.
The researchers asked 274 adults between the ages of 18 and 75 to watch a video of a finger-pricked and angry child, and then badess their level of pain on a scale ranging from zero (no pain) at 100 (intense pain). . Those who were told that the child was a boy? They rated her pain at 50.42 on average. Meanwhile, those who learned that the child was a girl rated her pain at 45.90.
So what does that tell us? Well, this suggests that adults take girls' grief less seriously than boys, providing even more evidence of badism in the perception of pain – even when those who suffer are children.
A conclusion, highlighted by the authors of the study and the Washington Post, is this Women who watched the video were more likely than men to say that the pain was less severe when they were told that the child was a girl. Or, in other words, women were more likely to minimize the gravity of the child's pain they thought she was a girl, rather than a boy.
The main author of the study, Brian D. Earp, said at the Washington Post This discovery was "a big mystery" for the researchers, but Kate Manne, philosopher at Cornell University and author of Down Girl: The logic of misogyny is not so surprised.
"As women are more and more encouraged to cope with pain and we take the side of taking men's pain more seriously, it makes sense that women are at least as bad if not worse," she said. declared Manne at the Washington Post.
According to Earp, the next study should include the "race" factor, which has its own set of bias on the perception of pain – including the fact that people of color experience less pain than whites, resulting in higher doses. low and longer wait for pain medication. So far, the present study seems to conclude that something known is already true: if you want your pain to be taken seriously, it is in your interest to become a man.
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