Women Report More Pain Than Men at Every Body Site — SkimNews
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- Researchers published one of the largest harmonization efforts in pain epidemiology in Nature Medicine, analyzing self-reported pain from over 6 million people across 118 countries between 1990 and 2025, aged 5 to over 100.
- Women's pain exceeded men's across all 11 bodily sites measured — head, face, neck, back, stomach, hip, knee and more — with the gender gap most pronounced for headache, facial, and abdominal pain.
- Pain trajectories rose most steeply before age 55 and peaked at or beyond 75, with back, hip, and knee pain climbing progressively across the lifespan, leading the authors to conclude that a substantial share of lifetime pain burden develops during working-age adulthood.
- People in the lowest Human Development Index regions had substantially higher late-life pain prevalence, with nearly double the rates of low back pain in older age compared with higher-HDI regions.
- Modifiable risk factors accounted for 18.3% of the global pain burden — including smoking, obesity, and low household incomes — ranging from 12.6% in sub-Saharan Africa to 27.1% in eastern Europe.
- Professor Andrew Horne of the University of Edinburgh called the research a "landmark" showing the gender pain gap is "real, consistent and global," while Professor Rebeccah Slater of Oxford flagged the paradox that women experience more pain yet are more likely to be dismissed, diagnosed late, or undertreated.
Why it matters: Drawing on data from 6 million people across 118 countries, the study offers the strongest evidence yet that the gender pain gap is global, not regional or cultural. With 18.3% of the world's pain burden tied to modifiable factors like smoking and obesity, and the steepest pain rise hitting before age 55, the findings give health systems and employers a concrete prevention window — but closing the gap requires women's pain to stop being clinically dismissed, as both quoted experts emphasized.
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