Gender Differences In Biological Research

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Men and women have differences in their human biology, these differences can cause the genders to experience events differently. Pain is experienced by both genders and the differences in biology have cause people to question whether there is a difference in how genders experience pain. This is mainly surrounding the idea of which is worse, childbirth or a kick in the balls. Research in this topic is vast and have concluded that genders do suffer pain differently. The biological difference however doesn’t affect the pain tolerance a great amount when compared to social, psychological and environmental factors. Research has shown that women tend to show a lower tolerance in noxious stimuli and epidemiologic studies show that women tend to experience …show more content…
Observations made via a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), have shown that various brain regions are involved in pain. These activities are comparable between the two genders and sex-specific activation of brain regions have also been observed. Men have shown activation in the “parietal cortex bilaterally, the contralateral secondary somatosensory cortex, the prefrontal cortex and the insula, while the ipsilateral perigenual and ventral cingulate cortex were preferentially activated in women.” The pain experienced by both were done via a thermal stimulus and women were reported to be in more pain. These differences in activation of brain regions can cause a difference in how pain is perceived by both …show more content…
The patients that were observed have all experienced chronic pain for an average of 5 years and women have found to be better at daily functions. The results also show that women tend to experience pain anxiety and intensity at higher levels and therefore are more sensitive. This shows that women have an increase in pain perception in comparison to men but are better at coping long term pain. This have been theorised to be affected by how pain is perceived in association to gender roles. Feminine gender norms say that pain should be accepted as part of normal life and are therefore more permissive when experiencing pain. On the other hand, masculine gender norms expect a higher tolerance when experiencing pain. These results show that women may be better when it comes to chronic pain since they were able to function at daily tasks better.
Research in gender pain differences undergoing a noxious stimulus have shown that women tend to undergo more intense pain but also use more coping strategies. Although the studies show that women suffer more they however cope better and therefore the results show no major or noteworthy difference in how the genders perceive
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