Global study finds women suffer more pain than men across the whole body
A major international study covering more than 6 million people in 118 countries found that women report higher pain levels than men at every body site examined, offering strong evidence of a global gender pain gap.
An international team of researchers has completed what they describe as one of the largest data-harmonisation efforts in pain epidemiology, drawing on records from over 6 million people across 118 countries gathered between 1990 and 2025. Participants ranged in age from five to over 100, and the findings were published in the journal Nature Medicine.
The analysis found that women reported greater pain than men across all 11 body regions studied — head, face, neck or shoulder, foot or ankle, hand or wrist, elbow, chest, back, stomach or abdomen, hip, and knee. The gap was most pronounced for headaches, facial pain and abdominal pain.
For both sexes, pain levels rose most sharply before age 55, with overall pain prevalence peaking at 75 or later. Back, hip and knee pain continued climbing throughout life, while headache, facial and abdominal pain tended to peak earlier before declining. Roughly 40% of participants reported back pain, making it the most common type, while facial pain was the rarest, affecting about 2%.
People in regions with the lowest Human Development Index scores showed markedly higher rates of pain in later life, including nearly double the rate of lower back pain among older adults compared with other regions. The study also found that 18.3% of the global pain burden was linked to smoking, obesity and low household income, though this share varied widely — from 12.6% in sub-Saharan Africa to 27.1% in eastern Europe.
Experts not involved in the study welcomed its scale and conclusions. Professor Andrew Horne of the University of Edinburgh called it a landmark study providing strong evidence that the gender pain gap is real, consistent and global, adding that women's pain remains too often dismissed, underresearched and undertreated. Professor Rebeccah Slater of the University of Oxford said the research demonstrates that women's higher pain burden holds remarkably consistently across body sites and across a highly diverse global population, underscoring the need for sex-specific data analysis and better-targeted treatments.
