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Before her gynaecology appointment, a racialised woman in Luxembourg spent weeks searching for a gynaecologist who was also racialised. She needed to reduce the odds of leaving consultation feeling dismissed, disbelieved, or diminished. The fact that this preparation was necessary at all, tells us something important about whose symptoms are taken seriously in healthcare spaces in Luxembourg. A healthcare system that guarantees universal access through compulsory public insurance, yet formal equality does not produce equal experiences.
The 2022 CEFIS/LISER national racism study identifies healthcare as one of the key domains where ethno-racial discrimination occurs, a finding that sits in tension with the system's self-image as universally accessible. Further, the report confirms that discrimination in healthcare takes concrete forms: refusals to take on certain patients, dismissive treatment of racialised families, and the use of labels like the "Mediterranean syndrome", the assumption that certain patients exaggerate their symptoms, applied without clinical basis to Arabs, Muslims, and other racialised groups. When gender intersects with racialisation, these dynamics are further compounded.
Research on the "gender pain gap" shows that women's pain is already more likely to be underestimated or psychologised than men's. For racialised women, both forces operate at once. The hours spent vetting doctors before an appointment are not a minor inconvenience. They represent an invisible tax in terms of time, energy, and mental health, paid by people who are already navigating a system that was not designed for them. It is a heavy burden that should not exist. And it is a burden carried alone, with no institutional support, in a country where nearly half of the residents already recognise that discrimination based on skin colour is widespread in society. |
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Published on 17.08.2026 at 14:12 
