How to Close the Gender Health Gap

If you’re a man, you are more likely to suffer a health condition that kills you. But if you’re a woman, you are more likely to live in ill health. Women spend 25 percent more of their lives in ill health compared to men. This, in a nutshell, is the gender health gap.

When a woman walks into a hospital, she’s less likely than a man to have her pain levels assessed, and if she is treated for pain, she will on average wait longer than a man to receive any treatment. If she has a condition that affects only women, she may find there are no satisfactory treatments. When she is given drugs, they may not work as well as expected, or come with side effects, as they are likely to have been tested predominantly on men. Even if she has a condition that affects both sexes, research suggests she’ll be diagnosed later in life than a man would.

These aren’t the consequences of a single problem, but the product of multiple failures within society generally and the health sector specifically. Sexism within health systems, where women’s symptoms are often dismissed and misdiagnosed. Badly designed clinical trials that predominantly feature men. Biased research funding, which is rarely spent on conditions exclusively affecting women, or on discovering how women specifically are affected by certain diseases. And medical schools that don’t do enough to teach about women’s health.

A recent report from the McKinsey Health Institute describes the gender health gap as a “$1 trillion opportunity to improve lives and economies,” such is the scale of imbalance against women’s health care worldwide. According to the BMJ, closing this gap in the UK could provide a £39 billion ($51 billion) boost to the British economy. It would save lives, and increase the well-being of millions of people—both women and men.

Nearly two years on from the publication of the UK’s first Women’s Health Strategy, a 10-year plan to improve the health of women everywhere, the UK Department of Health has announced Monday that it plans to offer “patient passports,” digital records of health data that can be accessed by different health care providers. The hope is that the move will speed up patient care and minimize errors. In light of this, WIRED has gathered experts from across a range of health disciplines to give their take on changes that could quickly and affordably shift the needle on women’s health.

Provide Early Screening Programs for PCOSKaren Joash, leading obstetrics and gynecology specialist

Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is an endocrine disorder that affects approximately 10 percent of women of reproductive age worldwide. Despite the condition being common, delayed diagnosis of PCOS is a significant issue, resulting in numerous long-term health consequences. Addressing this delay should be a governmental priority due to the substantial impact it has on public health.

Lack of health education is a critical factor contributing to delayed diagnosis: Women are often unaware of the symptoms, such as irregular menstrual cycles, excess hair on parts of the body where hair is normally minimal, and acne. Unaddressed PCOS can lead to severe long-term effects, including cardiovascular disease, infertility, and impaired glucose metabolism, significantly reducing quality of life and increasing health care costs.

Cardiovascular disease in particular is a major concern for women with PCOS, who are at higher risk due to conditions like obesity, hypertension, and dyslipidemia (having abnormal levels of fats in the bloodstream) that can be associated with it. Additionally, insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes are common associated risks, leading to further metabolic complications.

To mitigate these issues, governments should focus on enhancing public awareness and providing early screening programs. It’s crucial to remove the blame from women and recognize that managing PCOS is not just about weight loss, but involves evidence-based interventions with functional medicines—such as giving myoinositol supplements, which have shown promise in improving insulin sensitivity and ovarian function.

Comprehensive lifestyle interventions including dietary changes, regular physical activity, and weight management can alleviate symptoms significantly. Ensuring accessible and affordable health care, coupled with robust educational campaigns, will enable early diagnosis and effective management of PCOS, ultimately reducing its long-term health burden. Addressing PCOS through these measures is essential for improving women’s health outcomes and reducing future health care expenditures.

Teach That Women’s Heart Health Is Different From Men’sAaisha Opel, consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist

Women are different. It sounds obvious, but doctors, even some cardiologists, do not appreciate that women’s heart health is not the same as men’s. Fundamental to the delivery of first-class personalized care is the understanding that women can experience different symptoms to men when suffering heart conditions. For example, in women, back pain, nausea, or lightheadedness can denote a heart attack or angina, rather than chest discomfort, the typical symptom in men—though this can occur in women too. These symptoms are rarely spoken about, and so women often do not know what to be aware of.

When considering women’s heart health, there are different influences to consider. Perimenopause and menopause are important factors, as they cause an increase in cholesterol and low-density lipoproteins, both “bad” fats, raising the risk of heart attacks. At this time of life, women are also more prone to heart palpitations and their heart rate will also naturally increase.

A lack of understanding of heart symptoms and risk factors can negatively impact women accessing care. Where women do seek help, they are often dismissed and told they are anxious. In contrast to men, women tend not to attend for assessments of risk factors or heart screenings.

We need better representation of women in cardiology; women tend to pursue other careers in medicine due to a lack of female role models, and there are many misconceptions about the specialty, particularly since it is male dominated.

Lean Into Innovative Services to Plug the Gender Data GapValentina Milanova, founder of virtual women’s health clinic Daye

One crucial, achievable, and affordable step to close the gender health gap is increasing funding for clinical innovation in women’s health and leveraging modern gynecological services to collect much-needed data on female-specific conditions.

The rise of femtech and innovative women’s health services presents a unique opportunity. By partnering with academia, these companies and services can help collect real-world data on a large scale to better inform our understanding of gynecological diseases.

At Daye, for example, we are not only providing home-based diagnostic tools for STIs, the vaginal microbiome, and HPV, but also building a comprehensive dataset and biobank on gynecological health outcomes, which we then provide to academia for scientific publications. By making it easier for women to track their symptoms and access testing, we aim to gather insights to drive targeted research and improve diagnostic and treatment pathways.

Crucially, this data must be made widely available by publishing in research journals. Open access is key to maximizing impact and advancing scientific understanding for the benefit of all women. Partnerships between innovators, clinicians, and researchers, supported by dedicated funding streams, can accelerate the pace of discovery in women’s health.

Show How Important It Is to Have Up-to-Date Women’s DataRoxane Heaton, chief information officer, Macmillan Cancer Support

There needs to be greater impetus, energy, and political will when it comes to conversations around closing the health gap. One key barrier is access to research. With less than 1 percent of research investment going into women’s health, the changes needed are vast.

This lack of research then impacts what data is available. There is little to no research on women from before 30 years ago, for example, and as a result treatments and care pathways are built on old assumptions and non-personal data. An example is white middle-aged male coal-miner data being used to create care plans for arthritis, which means that ethnic minority females are not getting the best treatments for them.

So we need to challenge assumptions, past approaches, and data sources, and we can only do that with new data. Having a wealth and depth of data means more targeted and personal care pathways can be created. One area where we do have this today is with certain cancer types, such as brain tumors.

But for doctors to be able to gain and use individuals’ data to improve care, patients need to trust them—as well as trust what they intend to use the data for, and how they will use it. One of my colleagues, Jonathan Gregory, is a consultant clinical oncologist, fantastic speaker, and adviser on this topic. One of the many things he has cocreated with partners is a guide to help demystify AI and data in digital health solutions. You can read it here.

Treat Patients as the Complex Individuals They AreAngela Saini, independent science journalist, author, and broadcaster

The health gap is not always a sex issue. It is often gender—the social dimension of how we treat people—that can explain many of the failures when it comes to women’s health. It is often about women not being listened to, about people in the doctor’s surgery just not believing someone when they’re presenting their symptoms and talking about their pain. It’s about them being dismissed not just by male doctors and nurses, but by everyone.

We don’t always need more data. Sometimes we just need very simple things, like not allowing our biases to get in the way of recognizing what someone is telling us. It can be tempting for scientists to look at a gap and want to find a simple biological explanation for it—but when it comes to gender and health, those simple explanations often don’t exist. We need to decode what is happening one condition at a time.

I would argue it’s time for medicine to move away from broad sweeping statements about men’s bodies and women’s bodies and do more to recognize each patient as a complex individual in whom sex and gender plays only a part.

Include Training Specifically on Women’s Health at Medical SchoolMargaret Ikpoh, vice chair for professional development and standards at the Royal College of General Practitioners

One crucial step that could potentially narrow the gap is ensuring that the first Women’s Health Strategy for England—which was published in 2022, with the aim of improving women’s health—is implemented. As more than 90 percent of all women’s health care occurs in the community or primary care settings, we need to embed new culturally competent research and data-gathering in these places to increase our understanding of health conditions that affect women and how these vary. For example, we are already aware of racial disparities in maternal death rates and late cancer diagnoses.

We need to ensure women’s health issues are addressed more equitably. There’s wide variation of access to fertility services, for example. Finally, more up-to-date guidance for sex-specific conditions, such as cancer, menopause, fibroids, and endometriosis—which affects one in 10 women—will be pivotal to managing these more effectively.

Ensuring medical school curricula encompass specific training on women’s health issues would increase the competence and confidence of our next generation of health care professionals, who will need the necessary tools and resources to tackle the inequity that exists in dealing with women’s health issues.

Simply Listen to Women Better and There Will Be Improved OutcomesBridget Gorham, health economics policy adviser

In the women’s health economics project that I’m working on in partnership with the Create Health Foundation, we’re not looking at the cost of the gender health gap to England’s economy; we’re looking at the return on investment for every additional pound spent on women’s health. I think this distinction is critical as oftentimes, when we present a particular condition in terms of its cost to the economy, it’s interpreted as requiring tremendous investment to solve, whereas in women’s health, there are many small changes that can reap tremendous returns.

We’ve started with an economic analysis of obstetrics and gynecology services because the Women’s Health Strategy for England predominantly focuses on women’s reproductive health. When the strategy was announced, it seemed like a great starting point to shift the dial for women around the country—but after months of silence, many were wondering what action would follow. Then on International Women’s Day in 2023, £25 million ($33 million) was announced for the establishment or expansion of women’s health hubs across the country, which is a start—although not a lot when you divide the fund equally by 42, the number of Integrated Care Systems across the NHS; this amounts to £595,000 per ICS.

But what really grabbed my attention was the fine print, which stated that the funding was not intended to be recurrently affordable; in other words, it was a one-off sum to aid with the creation of a new service, but not for its longevity. That’s why our work is about making the economic case to illustrate the value of investing more sustainably and robustly in women’s health services.

In terms of quick wins, there is a huge saving to the public health system when you get it right the first time. We know from the strategy and various calls for evidence that women oftentimes aren’t listened to in medical settings, resulting in their concerns and needs being overlooked, which can result in repeat appointments, unnecessary referrals, or even ineffective treatments. If we can simply listen to women better, there would be improved outcomes for women and the systems that serve them.

We should be keeping women healthy not just because it’s a human right, and women and girls deserve to live healthy and productive lives, but also because of the huge role that women play in keeping those around them healthy, as mothers and carers, and also—given that almost three-quarters of NHS England staff are female—as the bulk of the public health system workforce in this country.

Use Insights From Tech Platforms to Better Inform Public Health ServicesAlice Pelton, founder of the research hub for women’s health The Lowdown

I created The Lowdown to quickly address the dismal data gap in women’s health care. I’m not interested in something that takes 20 to 30 years; I want to create impactful change for women right now.

I have experienced pain from endometriosis, an absolute roller coaster when trying to conceive, and countless side effects from various contraceptives. So I decided to do something to give women access to the data, support, and community they deserve.

The Lowdown’s unique approach combines credible scientific information with community reviews, emphasizing the importance of women’s experiences. To date we have collected more than 4 million data points on women’s lived experience with contraception, endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, fertility, and menopause and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

The insight we gather at The Lowdown on what women want and experience is shared with organizations like the NHS, to create a better health care system that is built with our needs in mind.

For example, we worked with the NHS to explore why rates for smear test bookings were declining. From our research with our community, we understood that pain and discomfort were the primary reasons women were not booking appointments—something the NHS had not been aware of as a primary factor. We worked with the NHS to produce fantastic content that helped explain ways to make smear tests more comfortable, which led to 50 percent of women feeling more likely to book a smear test as a result.