As many members know, I talk with many professionals and research experts concerning chronic pain in its many dimensions. In that context, I've recently come across two excellent articles that are very worth reading and forwarding to your medical doctors. It turns out that there is clear evidence for a medical basis for what can be called "The Gender Gap of Pain".
Also of interest is recent work to investigate gender differences in particular types of pain and disease. See, for instance, "Gut Reaction: Microbiome Provides a Clue to Gender Bias in Autoimmunity" . On this one I can't forward a link as the source is Science Magazine, which is by subscription. You may be able to find it in a local library.
Thank you for posting that article, Red. I sometimes wonder if women are treated differently to men also because they use different language when talking about their pain (or so I noticed e.g. at work when I talk to my male vs. female colleagues) and the language itself may be emotional and so to-the-point. Also, men don't let doctors dismiss them that easily, whereas women tend to be "nicer," not wanting to get into conflict etc.
Those factors all operate, Oldriska. A skilled linguist by the name of Barbara Tannen once remarked that women communicate to share problems and men to solve them. The cognitive dissonance definitely creates issues in communicating with doctors -- even lady doctors (who tend to be trained by misogynist males...