March is Women’s History Month, which always invites reflection on how far women have come. But if you work in health care, especially women’s health, it also raises a quieter and more uncomfortable question: why did it take so long for women’s bodies to be taken seriously in the first place?
For centuries, women’s health was not studied with curiosity or respect. It was managed, controlled, and often misunderstood. The legacy of that history still shows up in modern medicine, sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes in painfully obvious ones.
The truth is that women’s health has often been treated as an afterthought.
For much of medical history, research focused almost entirely on male bodies. Male physiology was considered the “default,” while women were viewed as variations that were too complicated to study because of their hormones or reproductive cycles. As a result, women were frequently excluded from clinical trials well into the late twentieth century. Even today, we continue to discover how many medications were originally tested primarily on men.
This historical gap has consequences. It affects how conditions are diagnosed, how symptoms are interpreted, and how seriously women’s complaints are taken.
If we go back even further, the story becomes more troubling.
In ancient Greek medicine, the uterus was thought to be responsible for a range of mysterious symptoms. The word hysteria itself comes from the Greek word hystera, meaning uterus. Physicians believed that a “wandering womb” could move through the body and cause anxiety, fainting, or emotional distress. Treatments ranged from scented oils to forced rest cures, none of which addressed the actual physical or psychological experiences women were having.
By the nineteenth century, hysteria had become a catch-all diagnosis for women whose symptoms doctors did not understand. Women experiencing pain, mood changes, trauma, or neurological symptoms were frequently labeled hysterical rather than carefully evaluated. In many cases, their suffering was minimized or dismissed entirely.
Surgical history reflects similar patterns.
The hysterectomy, a procedure that removes the uterus, is now performed with clear medical indications and careful surgical technique. But historically, it was sometimes used far more broadly. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, hysterectomies were occasionally performed for vague diagnoses like “nervous disorders” or “excessive emotion.” Many women underwent invasive surgery without the level of informed consent that we expect today.
At the same time, the history of reproductive health includes stories that are deeply tied to social inequality.
In the nineteenth century, the foundations of modern gynecologic surgery were developed in part through experimental procedures performed on enslaved Black women in the United States without anesthesia or consent. Their names were rarely recorded in medical textbooks, yet their bodies were used to advance surgical knowledge that benefited generations of patients afterward. Today, historians and physicians alike are working to acknowledge these women and recognize the ethical failures of that period.
Reproductive autonomy has also been contested throughout history. Laws regulating contraception and abortion have shifted dramatically across decades and countries, often placing women’s health decisions under legal and political control. For much of the twentieth century in the United States, access to contraception itself was restricted. Married women could obtain it before unmarried women could, and many physicians refused to provide information at all.
Even infant feeding carries its own complicated history. Wet nursing and forced nursing were practices shaped by economic and racial hierarchies, where Black women were often compelled to feed the children of enslavers while their own children received less care. Later, cultural pressures swung in different directions, with formula feeding heavily promoted at times and breastfeeding strongly emphasized at others. Each era carried its own assumptions about what women “should” do with their bodies.
When you look at all of this history together, a pattern emerges. Women’s bodies have often been viewed through the lens of control rather than collaboration.
But there is another part of the story, too, and it is an important one.
Beginning in the twentieth century, women themselves began pushing for change. The women’s health movement of the 1960s and 1970s challenged the medical establishment to listen more closely and study women’s bodies more seriously. Books like Our Bodies, Ourselves encouraged women to understand their anatomy and advocate for their care. Researchers began including women in clinical trials, and medical specialties dedicated specifically to women’s health expanded.
Progress has been real.
Today, we know far more about pregnancy, pelvic health, menopause, autoimmune disease, and cardiovascular risk in women than we did even a few decades ago. Imaging technology, surgical techniques, and rehabilitation approaches have improved dramatically. Entire fields such as pelvic floor physical therapy now focus on restoring function and quality of life after childbirth, surgery, or chronic pain conditions.
But despite these advances, gaps still exist.
Women are still more likely than men to have their pain underestimated in emergency settings. Autoimmune diseases, which disproportionately affect women, often take years to diagnose. Conditions such as endometriosis or pelvic pain may still be dismissed or misunderstood before patients find the right specialist.
In my own field, pelvic health physical therapy, many patients arrive after years of being told that symptoms like leaking, pain with intercourse, or postpartum core weakness are simply things they should learn to live with. Often, they are surprised to learn that there are treatments available, exercises that help, and professionals who specialize in these issues.
That moment of realization is powerful. It reminds us that listening is one of the most important tools in health care.
Women’s health is not just about reproductive organs or pregnancy. It includes musculoskeletal health, cardiovascular health, mental health, and the complex ways these systems interact throughout a lifetime. It includes athletes, mothers, professionals, and women who may never choose to have children. It includes teenagers learning about their bodies and older adults navigating menopause and aging.
Women’s health is, simply put, human health.
Women’s History Month offers a chance to recognize both the progress made and the work that remains. It encourages us to look honestly at the past so that we can build a more thoughtful and inclusive future for health care.
The encouraging news is that the conversation is changing. More research is being conducted, more specialists are being trained, and more patients feel empowered to ask questions and seek answers.
And that shift often begins with something simple. A woman noticing a symptom and deciding that it matters. A physician or therapist taking the time to listen. A community talking openly about health topics that once felt uncomfortable or taboo.
Those small moments add up. They help move women’s health from the margins of medicine toward the center, where it always should have been.
