Sex Differences in Pain Perception

There is no simple universal rule that men or women feel pain more acutely: findings depend on the stimulus, measure, health condition, and social factors. Reviews of laboratory studies often find somewhat lower pain thresholds in women for several stimuli, but differences are not consistent across all tests. This does not show that nature made women less sensitive because of childbirth; labor pain itself is not evidence for that evolutionary explanation. [1–3]