Naga Munchetty: 'The impact of medical misogyny is disastrous – we cannot stay silent'

I was made to feel it was just a normal part of being a girl – and the message that came through was that I simply needed to tough it out.

At the age of 47 – after various treatments including going on the pill, taking progesterone injections and undergoing sterilisation – I bled for 35 days consecutively, and an ultrasound finally revealed my condition: adenomyosis, meaning the lining of the womb (endometrium) grows outside the uterus into my pelvis. It only took 32 years to get a diagnosis.

My body functions like every other woman’s, but this story isn’t about me, it’s about women’s health issues being ignored. One in eight women are reported to suffer from adenomyosis, for which there’s no cure, not enough research and the waiting lists are long. This oversight in female health is nothing new. I was fortunate to have medical insurance, which meant I could pay for an ultrasound and have one quickly.

Medical misogyny – the absence of equal care for women’s health through lack of interest, recognition and resources – has been around for centuries, with everything from painkiller dosage to BMI measurements being based on men’s bodies. My book title, It’s Probably Nothing, comes from the message to women, both implicit and often said out loud: don’t worry your little head.

It’s both external: an unwillingness to recognise women’s pain on a par with men’s, and internal: women’s fear of being perceived as hysterical if they complain. The word “hysterectomy” even dates from Plato’s time when a woman’s “wandering womb” was seen as a source of ills both physical and mental.

Today I know younger women who’ve been diagnosed with adenomyosis and told their only option is to have a child. What they hear is: use your womb for what it was meant for, and you’ll get sorted.

Besides the blatant unfairness of all this, the social impact is disastrous. Women are the main carers in society, and if they’re dealing with anything from heavy bleeding to anaemia, how can they fulfil their potential? And when they can’t, the economy isn’t getting their creativity, brilliance, determination or fervour.

We’ve already lost so much as a society because women have not been kept well. I’m not a campaigner, but I recognise that there is a fight for funding when it comes to women’s reproductive health. We have parliamentary committees and investigating bodies, but until it’s as important in the world of pharmaceuticals and medicine for women to be healthy as it is for a man to get an erection, we’re not there, and we all lose.

I was worried when I first spoke out about these issues on Radio 5 Live, that people would say, “Oh, she’s whining.” But I received so many messages from women – and men – grateful not to have these conditions left in the shadows.

It inspired the monthly section on my radio show That Time of the Month. We tackle all sorts of health issues not spoken about: libido, incontinence, fertility and endometriosis, which affects around one in ten women in the UK.

My hope is that, if we’re talking about it on national radio where parents, partners and children can hear it, it can’t be taboo. Both on radio and for my book, the reason people have spoken to me is, they don’t want someone else going through what they have. It’s a platform to say, “I’ve been told to keep my mouth shut and put up with it. But I don’t have to.”

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It’s Probably Nothing: Critical Conversations on the Women’s Health Crisis (and How to Thrive Despite it) is now available to purchase in hardback.

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