A woman suffers more pain than a man in her lifetime, according to a major new study involving nearly six million people across 118 countries.
Women endure greater pain across every part of the body, the study notes, renewing concerns about the gender pain gap, which means women are less likely to be prescribed pain relief when needed and are more often dismissed.
The study, published in Nature Medicine, analysed data collected between 1990 and 2025 from over six million people ranging in age from five years to over 100.
It found that women consistently reported higher levels of pain than men across all 11 anatomical areas examined, including head, face, neck, back, stomach, hip, and knee.
There were particularly stark differences in headaches, facial pain and abdominal pain between men and women.
Women were 83 per cent more likely than men to report facial pain, 74 per cent more likely to suffer headaches, and 60 per cent more likely to experience stomach or abdominal pain.
The disparity became even more pronounced when researchers looked at the severity and spread of pain.
High-intensity pain peaked around the age of 50 before declining while generalised pain reached its highest prevalence at around 70.
“Trajectories varied markedly by phenotype,” they wrote, “headache, abdominal, and facial pain peaked earlier in life before declining, whereas musculoskeletal pain generally rose progressively with age.”
Neck, shoulder and elbow pain peaked around midlife and declined thereafter, whereas lower body pain, including back, hip and knee, continued to increase across the lifespan, researchers pointed out, “consistent with the greater role of cumulative mechanical and degenerative load at weight-bearing sites”.
“Although the likelihood of experiencing any pain rises steadily with age, the most disabling forms of pain followed an inverted-U trajectory, peaking in mid-to-late adulthood before declining,” the study noted.
“This distinction, between pain accumulation and pain that intensifies and then resolves, has direct implications for where prevention and care should be concentrated across the lifespan.”
The research also found 18.3 per cent of the global pain burden was due to smoking, obesity and low household incomes. This ranged from 12.6 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa to 27.1 per cent in eastern Europe.
Researchers say current estimates of the pain burden focus on diagnoses which typically means that people with limited access to healthcare are left out. This is why they analysed rates of self-reported pain, which is more likely to provide a foundation for more equitable monitoring and prevention efforts.
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