Intense pelvic pain, severely painful periods, infertility – these symptoms associated with endometriosis already appeared in medical texts as far back as antiquity. Yet this disease, which affects 10% of women of reproductive age, long remained ignored. The reason: the long history of medical and social representations of female pain.

Having very painful periods. Being constantly exhausted. Suffering during sexual intercourse or experiencing unexplained digestive problems. For millions of women, these symptoms are part of daily life. Yet they are still too often minimised, or even considered “normal”. Behind this pain, a common but long-overlooked disease sometimes hides: endometriosis.

Endometriosis is estimated to affect around one in ten women of reproductive age worldwide, amounting to nearly 190 million women. In France alone, this represents approximately two million people, according to a report by Inserm in 2024. The average delay between the onset of the first symptoms and diagnosis remains estimated at between seven and ten years in many countries .

To understand this delay, it is necessary to look back at the long history of medical and social representations of female pain.

Suffering that can be traced back to Antiquity

Contrary to a widely held belief, endometriosis is not a recent disease. While its identification as a distinct medical entity is relatively modern, descriptions of compatible symptoms – intense pelvic pain, severely painful periods, infertility – already appear in ancient medical texts.

The earliest references appear in Egyptian medical papyri dating back to approximately 1855 BCE. In ancient Greece, the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus, attributed to Hippocrates (5th–4th........

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