I’ve come across this assertion time and again and I was wondering if their is any objective basis for this statement or is it just something people believe with no real evidence.
Personally I rather doubt it.
We go through labor voluntarily, sometimes multiple times and quite often with no painkillers of any sort. Get back to me when you’ve tried it and we’ll have another go at this question.
My anecdotal experience shows otherwise.
As that is something no man will ever experience its a bit of a pointless comparison isn’t it?
And women always go through labor with dignity and aplomb?
A more helpful measurement would be the “how long can you keep your arm in ice water?” test. It really really hurts without causing (significant) damage to the body, and the subjects can opt out at any time. Get a bunch of men and women to do it and see who can stand it the longest.
Yes. Also quite possibly wrong:
Most women I have talked to that have done both say passing a kidney stone is far worse than having a baby, so let’s raise the bar past labor.
Here is another, more recent article:
Living through pain is not an indicator of pain tolerance. Women experience labor but that in itself doesn’t prove that women have a greater pain tolerance–it just means that many women have to tolerate pain at a level that many men are never exposed to.
I only know of one case where a man had a baby but I don’t think they performed any pain tolerance tests on him at the time.
I once heard a female comedian talking about childbirth. She said, “Men–do you want to know what it’s like? OK, first, take your upper lip between your finger and thumb. Now, pull it over your head!”
I’ve treated thousands and thousands of people for their pain in my professional role as an ED physician. I won’t pretend for a moment to have even kept track or made any kind of formal comparison. My sense is that women are not more tolerant of pain.
I don’t buy into the childbirth example for a number of reasons. First of all, even if were the most painful thing on earth, it provides no comparison. There is certainly a lot of hootin and hollerin that goes on for many women, so it’s not as if one can say “It’s incredibly painful, and look how stoically it’s handled.” Secondly, some cultures have women who seem to deliver without quite so much drama around it, so maybe it isn’t all that painful. Thirdly, there is an enormous overlay what with it being all about baby and also very anticipated. This is quite different from busting your ankle unexpectedly. So maybe it does hurt like crazy but the fact that it’s a natural process around baby ameliorates it. It’s just not a useful marker of any kind since, as pointed out, men don’t go through it so there is nothing to compare.
I will say that pain “tolerance” (the term itself may not even be fair) seems to vary more among individuals than it does by sex.
For me, labor didn’t really hurt. It was just intensely uncomfortable. And to ivn’s point, I have done both, passed a kidney stone and borne two children, and the kidney stone was worse.
The worst pain I felt recently was when the radiologist had to give me an injection prior to my lymph node biopsy. She gave it to me on the bottom side of my nipple. *That *hurt, and yes, I hollered.
– Carol Burnett. 
I think that any pain tolerance is really just learned behavior, and is probably equal between the sexes. If you look at toddlers, the first time they skin their knee or something, its the end of the world, but a few years later, its hardly worth mentioning. They aren’t used to the pain the first few times, which makes it worse.
I don’t believe this, because I am a woman and I am a total wuss. I am pretty stoic–well, most of the time–but inwardly I am screaming “Why me, this is intolerable, I can’t take it, when will this end,” etc., and we’re usually talking about a hangnail. When giving (giving? having to suffer, is more like it) a blood sample I would rather have them drain it out of one of my veins than prick my finger. Being tortured until I confess? Okay, that won’t take long, in fact I will pre-emptively confess now.
OTOH my physical therapist said redheads are actually more susceptible to pain. (When she wanted to move my arm one way and I said “Oooh I can’t do that it hurts I’m a wuss.” She found another way.)
If the debate wasn’t complicated enough, I’d like to add that not all pain is, well, painfull.
What I mean is that all other things being equal, a given pain will affect different individuals in different ways. It’s not a simple matter of intensity - some people can take pain here but not there.
Anecdote time : I once cut my foot right to the bone and while it did hurt a lot, once I got the bleeding under control (or so I thought) I kept right on doing what I was doing before it happened. When I broke my collarbone, it took me five days to think that maybe I should see a doctor about that annoying stabbing pain whenever I moved my arm. Goddamn body should do what it’s told, shut up and bloody well like it, y’know ?
On the other hand, a tooth or tummy ache will make me wimper and cry and beg for painkillers, lots of 'em, right nooooow please please please make it stop.
I know 1 woman who swears she would have chosen death over the pain. She wasn’t joking.
My sympathies to those whose labor is not appreciated.
I have no way of answering that. I’ve taken some serious hits playing sports without crumbling but I’ve also thrown my back out and couldn’t stand up. It seems like it depends on whether I’ve truly tagged a nerve as to how well I can take the pain. Can’t imagine cutting my arm off to escape a bolder that’s crushing it, but it’s been done.
So the basic concensus is that if there is any difference its in the other direction but it mostly comes down to the individual concerned?
And by asking the question I didn’t mean to imply that men are better at withstanding pain than women, as one poster says I believe mostly concerns the individual themselves no matter their gender.
Its just one of those commonly held beliefs that irritates me and I asked the question because I came across it in a book recently.
Don’t even get me started on the whole, “We only use 10% of our brains!!!” myth 
This is the case for me, too. I have lots of back problems, but they don’t usually provoke any sort of dramatic response. I think I might choose general anesthesia (or death) over having a Novocaine shot in the front of my mouth, though.
I think the average woman experiences more intense pain than the average man, but that doesn’t mean that either side is better at “withstanding” it.
I don’t know if you’re joking or I’m just too tired right now, but this doesn’t make any sense. While I would refer to this person as a man because they say they are a man, the fact that he had a baby cannot have anything to do with whether men or women tolerate pain better, because when it comes to genetics and biochemistry (what hasn’t been altered by hormone therapy), this person is a woman. Any comparison between his labour and that of any other woman is a comparison between individuals, not between the sexes (remember, gender != sex).