Pain, although a historical constant, is culturally and temporally specific. Cultural gender orders influence what is perceived as painful and how pain is expressed, communicated and interpreted. The articles collected in this special issue illustrate the interlinkage of gender and pain. The case studies address a number of topics, from deliberately self-inflicted pain in psychiatric contexts and as queer-feminist art practice to interpretations of birth pain by male physicians to female Greek mourning rituals and a Jewish photographer's attempt to deal artistically with the trauma of the Holocaust. The focus is on Europe in the 19th and 20th century.