Not a strange word anymore

A women’s health issue gains media attention through women journalists with first-hand knowledge, but coverage challenges continue

When Emma Barnett first began speaking publicly about her experience with endometriosis, she had never even heard of the condition — let alone seen it reflected in the news. Years later, as one of the UK’s most prominent broadcasters, she believes progress has been made in how the media approaches the subject.

Currently the a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today and after spending 3 year’s on Radio 4’s flagship Woman’s Hour, Barnett built her career as a sharp yet empathetic interviewer.

She also the authored the book Period: It’s About Bloody Time, which tackles the stigma around menstruation and women’s health.

Barnett’s willingness to discuss her own diagnosis of endometriosis has made her one of the few high-profile journalists, alongside fellow BBC presenter and adenomyosis trailblazer Naga Munchetty, to use her platform to shed light on underrepresented conditions like endometriosis and adenomyosis.

Endometriosis is a debilitating disease where endometrial-like tissue grows in places it shouldn’t — outside of the uterus. Endometriosis can be found almost anywhere, but is most commonly located on organs such as the ovaries, fallopian tubes, bowel, and bladder. The condition affects approximately 176 million women worldwide, yet remains deeply misunderstood even by medical professionals. Adenomyosis is a disease in which cells of the uterine lining grow into the uterine wall, causing heavy periods, cramping, and painful sex. The uterus can double or triple in size from the condition.

I think there’s been progress in the sense of (endometriosis is) not such a strange word anymore, Barnett explains on the phone to me between meetings one September afternoon. When I first started talking about endometriosis, I had never heard of it, never mind read about it as someone who had it. Now it’s one of those diseases that gets written or talked about.

Still, the coverage is limited. Compared to diseases like diabetes, it doesn’t get many articles that tell you about amazing advancements. It’s a disease that’s quite stuck where it is and often it’s still just being explained, Barnett said.

This reflects a wider challenge in reporting on women’s health conditions: media narratives often focus on awareness but struggle to move beyond basic explanations, partly because science itself is far behind where it ought to be.

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Emily Keogh is a women’s football writer for ESPN, and she has endometriosis. Sitting opposite me at a café next to London’s King’s Cross St Pancras Station with a coffee in her hand, Keogh spoke at length about the power the industry holds, and how it could change the game when it comes to female health.

Women’s football — called women’s soccer in the United States — and coverage in the media has already moved the dial on LGBTQ+ acceptance. Now, it can help shift the conversation on women’s health, too — not because it should be women’s responsibility to fix the systems that failed them, but because stories have power.

We’ve seen how quickly things can change when enough people speak up; that has to happen for this too, Keogh proclaimed. Endometriosis is such an isolating disease, but in my work, I’ve seen how openness changes things. When someone talks about it, it normalizes it.

Keogh continued zealously, When players, coaches, and journalists share their own experiences, it becomes part of the conversation. And for younger girls watching, that matters. They might see themselves in those stories, recognize their symptoms sooner, and push for answers. Football has already shown it can drive cultural change — now it’s time to do that for menstrual health.

Barnett has spoken and written about her own diagnosis, but she doesn’t always place her story foreground when reporting. Instead, she treats it with the same journalistic standards as any other subject, yet still acknowledges that lived experience can sharpen empathy. Barnett’s approach underlines the same truth: endometriosis is no longer an invisible word, but the media still has much further to go in telling the full story.

Doctors still don’t know what causes it, if it’s genetic, how to stop it and how to treat it. That’s dispiriting, but that’s not journalists’ fault — that’s just where we’re up to, she said.

Barnett admitted, listening to others with the condition can be upsetting, but validating in a weird way. She says there’s a solidarity in it. Anything where you can fully understand what someone is talking about does allow you to ask better questions, deeper questions. But when I’ve done items on endometriosis, I don’t bring up that I have it. Either you know about me or you don’t. I just try and treat it like any other subject that requires proper investigation and empathy.

As someone working in an ever-changing media landscape, Keogh works hard to contribute to coverage of the disease in relation to sports. This hasn’t always been an easy task, though. She said part of the difficulty is because most newsrooms are made up of men, and having to pitch about something they don’t understand that’s a taboo topic — nine times out of ten they don’t want to do the story. That’s an issue with the media itself.

Keogh divulged that because endometriosis is such an isolating disease as well, it’s really difficult to then explain to people. The environment of football isn’t adapted to women, let alone to women with endometriosis. I genuinely don’t know whether that’s something that may ever change.

The process leading up to a diagnosis of endometriosis was difficult for Keogh, as it is for many. I spent the whole of my late teens and early twenties having to advocate for myself with doctors, to be heard, to be understood, to be seen, she told me candidly.

To help combat the neglect of diseases like endometriosis by the media, Keogh said she thinks the way periods are portrayed in general needs to change.

I watch tampon and pad adverts and they’re like, you can still do this with this pad, you can still go and play tennis on your period, she said. People see that and they absorb that and they assume that with the right period product you can do whatever you want.

Keogh continued to illustrate the problems with such ads.

For nine out of ten women that don’t have endometriosis or any sort of complications with their gynecological health, yeah — that’s normal, she said. But for a very large portion of the population, that’s not how it works. You can’t just stick a period product on and go back to your normal life. For me, that’s not possible.

All around us are things that tell us that periods aren’t a big deal, Keogh explained. I think adverts for period products are great, it opens up the conversation. If people are seeing it maybe it makes it easier to have conversations, but at the same time I think the language and the tone of certain adverts ingrain in your brain that no, periods aren’t a big deal, but actually for a lot of people it is a massive deal.

If there is one thing Keogh is certain of, it’s that sports journalism has the power to play a vital role in sparking constructive conversations about endometriosis.

If we can harness those conversations so it’s a constant thing, I think would be really beneficial to kind of changing the way that we approach women’s health, Keogh said resolutely. We see the openness of saying footballers are athletes, so they deal with everything, they play through problems and injuries and all of this, but I’d love it if there was a time that a player said I’m not available for selection today, I’ve really bad cramp. That would be such a big thing.

Barnett’s reflections on her experience covering endometriosis and speaking about endometriosis highlight both how far the media has come and how far it has yet to go. Endometriosis is no longer an unknown word, but the coverage is still constrained by a lack of medical progress, limited resources, and enduring stigma.

She said we must re-frame it as a systemic condition, not simply bad periods, reflecting the next step in shifting the conversation.

As a journalist who has long championed women’s voices, Barnett represents both the promise and the challenge of using personal experience to drive more honest, empathetic, and ambitious reporting on women’s health.

Barnett illustrated how different corners of the media are slowly transforming the way we speak about endometriosis. Barnett represents the authority of broadcast journalism — empathetic, probing, holding institutions to account. She is making visible the everyday impact of a condition that medicine still struggles to explain.

Keogh related endometriosis and women’s health in the news to accessibility issues women, disabled journalists, and even disabled sports fans face in sports and stadiums.

Accessibility-wise, I don’t think a lot of football grounds and the environments that we work in are even built for women, let alone women that have additional needs.

Keogh continued, Some stadiums don’t have lifts, with the press box on the fifth floor. So, if you’re on crutches or you’ve got a walking problem, you’re on your own. It’s a widespread issue.

Such difficulties are not reserved for journalists, with fans often facing outdated accessibility issues as well. Stewards and grounds staff are incredibly unsympathetic to general problems, Keogh vents, let alone something that’s so intricate and — I hate calling it embarrassing because it’s not going to be embarrassed about — but when you trying to explain something to somebody and you get a judgmental look back, you do feel like you’re going to your shell.

Speaking from experience, Barnett said the problem of under-coverage in the media comes from lack of research by the medical community and lack of understanding in general.

The key thing about endo is it’s not a period disease. Everybody goes, Oh, you’ve got painful periods. That can be one manifestation, but some people don’t. It’s a systemic-wide disease driven by hormones. Once I understood that, it changed the way I saw it, Barnett said.

That’s where journalists such as Barnett and Keogh play a key role.

I think people who have endometriosis are specialists in their own experience and what they’ve managed to find out about the disease, Barnett asserted. The media needs to do a good job of holding scientists to account, and then looking after those who talk about how it is and act as witnesses to it.

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Beth McCowen is a freelance journalist who specializes in women’s health and sport. Her work seeks to alter how individual journalists and the media as a whole approach and raise awareness of issues.

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