Women live longer but experience more years in poor health than men, according to a global gender health gap analysis.
This uneven global progress on health over the past 30 years underlines an urgent need to boost funding for women’s health services and research, experts say.
“Females have longer lives but live more years in poor health”, said the study’s senior author, Dr Luisa Sorio Flor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington.
When it comes to women’s health, Dr Sorio Flor said there’s been “limited progress made in reducing the burden of conditions leading to illness and disability, underscoring the urgent need for greater attention to non-fatal consequences that limit women’s physical and mental function, especially at older ages.”
The study examined the impact of the world’s 20 leading causes of disease to better understand the health differences between women and men.
Researchers found that women are particularly affected by non-fatal conditions that cause illness and disability, such as musculoskeletal problems, mental health issues and headache disorders.
While women’s health is typically centred around sexual and reproductive concerns, the study’s report says it’s crucial that women’s healthcare extends beyond these areas to “encompass the full spectrum of health issues affecting females throughout the life course”.
The analysis highlights that research is underfunding for the non-communicable diseases more commonly experienced by females, such as mental and musculoskeletal disorders.
“Similarly, males are experiencing a much higher and growing burden of disease with fatal consequences,” said Dr Sorio Flor.
The analysis estimates that for 13 of the the top 20 causes of illness and death in 2021, the rate was higher in men than women. This includes Covid-19, road injuries and a range of heart, respiratory and liver diseases.
And these health differences between women and men are continuing to grow with age, according to the research, meaning women are left with higher levels of illness and disability throughout their lives, as they tend to live longer than men.
“Females and males differ in many biological and social factors that fluctuate and, sometimes, accumulate over time,” said Dr Sorio Flor, “resulting in them experiencing health and disease differently at each stage of life and across world regions.”
The study is calling for countries to boost their reporting of sex and gender data, as Dr Sorio Flor said the challenge is now to design sex-and-gender-informed ways of treating these diseases and illnesses.
There’s also a need for more data spanning the sex and gender spectrums, as this latest analysis was limited to data on females and males.