Traditionally women had a duty to suffer pain that followed from the curse on Eve: "in pain you shall bring forth children." Nineteenth-century physicians believed that suffering was physiologically inherent in femininity, because the very functioning of the female reproductive system necessarily entailed pain: "Woman's reproductive organs.... exercise a controlling influence upon her entire system, and entail upon her many painful and dangerous diseases," wrote one medical reformer.

In line with this tradition, Freud's disciples elaborated a theory that masochism was innate in women, based on the pain women experience in relation to their sexual functions. Today, there still exists what might be called a pain differential between women and men.

Epidemiological surveys find more pain among women than among men. Not counting disorders affecting women's reproductive system, "there is a marked preponderance of women over men in a surprising number of specific conditions," including migraine, facial pain, temporomandibular joint syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis, according to the prominent pain expert Patrick D. Wall.

Pain that has a psychological (as opposed to physical) origin also occurs more frequently in women than in men. Wall remarks that instead of serious study of this phenomenon "there is a subculture of flippant and sexist pseudo explanations" focused on the myths "that women have lower pain thresholds and a high tendency to complain" and that "the difference is explained by hormones."