Dr Anke Samulowitz: Gender Norms, Pain and Bias in Healthcare and Sport

Dr Anke Samulowitz is a physiotherapist and psychologist. She works as a quality improvement facilitator at the Centre for Equity in Health Care in Gothenburg, Sweden, combined with research at the University of Gothenburg. She defended her thesis on “Pain, gender norms and psychosocial resources” in 2023. Her research focuses on pain and gendernorms, stereotypical ideas about men and women; how they are and expected to behave. Gender norms can lead to gender biases, medically unmotivated differences made between men and women, hampering equity in health care. To combine research and quality improvement in health care is one of her central goals.   **Themes:** - Anke's background combining physiotherapy, psychology and health equity research - The shift from a biomedical to a biopsychosocial understanding of pain - How gender norms shape the way pain is expressed, reported and assessed - Women portrayed as emotional and exaggerating pain; men as stoic and pain-tolerant - Media coverage of athlete injuries — heroism attributed to men, fragility to women - Gender norms linking masculinity with sport/training and femininity with everyday exercise - Women expected to self-manage pain; men expected to seek and receive treatment - Gendered leisure patterns — women as "downsizers" in sport after family responsibilities - Gender bias in pain and assessment questionnaires (including eating disorder screening in athletes) - Social support and chronic pain — emotional support more critical for men, practical support more critical for women - Future research directions: contextual mechanisms of gender bias, social support in sport, and questionnaire validity