Marta Miret, a researcher at Autónoma de Madrid and a professor in its Psychiatry department, said women’s higher reported prevalence of pain is 'multicausal'.
The evidence comes from a study based on pain data from more than 6 million people. Researchers assessed patients aged between 5 and 100 years and considered 11 areas: the head, face, neck or shoulder, chest/thorax, stomach or abdomen, back, elbow, hand or wrist, hip, knee, and foot or ankle.
The self-reported data were collected between 1990 and 2025 in 118 countries, including Spain. Scientists from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III and the universities of Cádiz, Autónoma de Barcelona and Autónoma de Madrid took part in the analysis.
Women reported pain more often than men at every anatomical point studied and at every stage of life. The clearest differences concerned headache, facial pain and abdominal pain.
For both sexes, pain prevalence rose most sharply up to age 55, and the largest peaks occurred before that age. In seven of the eleven body points, pain peaked in middle adulthood before declining. The study also found pain reaching peak levels at age 75 or later.
Patterns differed across the body. About 40% of participants reported back pain, while facial pain was the least common, reported by 2% of respondents. Pain in the back, hips and knees continued to rise throughout life.
Miret’s description of the difference as 'multicausal' reflects factors identified by the researchers. Women tend to carry a double work and family burden and take on more caring responsibilities, while sociocultural expectations lead men to report pain less often than women.
Women also typically experience more pain-related diseases that have traditionally received too little research attention, including menstrual migraine, endometriosis and rheumatoid arthritis.
The authors estimated that smoking, obesity and low household income accounted for 18.3% of the global pain burden. The research was published in Nature Medicine.
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