I Felt That is a collaborative, multidisciplinary, care-centred project that calls special attention to work by thirteen selected women and non-binary artists who have experienced the gender pain gap. This term can be defined as a form of discrimination within healthcare, where unconscious medical bias contributes to women’s pain being written off either as a normal part of womanhood or as a matter of little relevance.  I Felt That began in March 2022 with an Open Call, from which these thirteen artists were selected. Meeting weekly online for lectures, workshops and ‘crits’, each artist has shared research, stories, history and personal experiences related to the wide topic of ‘gendered pain’. A strong, supportive community has been created through these meetings, and it is a joy to finally present the works that have been created over such a long period of time.

The project intends to challenge the broader understanding of ‘gendered pain’ as implicitly taboo and expands upon the systematic dismissal of women’s pain. A University of Miami 2020  study concluded that when male and female patients express the same amount of pain, observers view female patients’ pain as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus medication. This is only one of many examples of the significant gender bias that directly correlates to disparity in not only treatment, but also recognition, of pain. I Felt That hopes to lift the lid on women and non-binary people’s experience of pain and elevate the voices that have so long been marginalised by medical institutions, as well as to facilitate vital conversations around gendered illness and pain.

The subject of the exhibition and project, being so personal, is represented uniquely by each artist. The works in the exhibition are comprised of multiple different mediums including performance, embroidery, sculpture, writing, and painting. Through a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, pain, disability, tenderness and motherhood become tools for solidarity and companionship, in part inspired by and rooted in the past three months of conversations, workshops, lectures and discussions.

I Felt That features works by Shir Cohen, J Williamson, Ruth Batham, Jennifer Nieuwland, Louise Benton, Lavinia Harrington, Chloe L-S-H, Lucienne O’mara, Lucy Cade, Mhairi Bell-Moodie, Zayn Qahtani, Polina Pak and Qingqing Liu.

I Felt That takes into consideration how ‘woman’ is differently articulated for women of colour, working class women, and queer women in comparison to their white, heterosexual, middle-class counterparts.  Moreover, in specific regard to the gender pain gap, it is necessary to note that women who are Black, Asian or from minority ethnic backgrounds not only experience greater health inequalities than white women, but further risk having their accounts of pain underestimated and discounted because of false beliefs around racial difference and pain sensitivity (as the UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists reported in 2020). As such, the gender pain gap is also an effect of the implicit racial bias on perceptions of women of colour’s pain, most especially in reproductive health care.