As women, we are no strangers to gaps. A gap is a really cute way of talking about entrenched inequality, isn’t it? You know, that pesky little gender pay gap, the gender gap in leadership roles, the gender gap in unpaid work and care, and oh, how could I forget the thigh gap?
The problem I have with the term “gap” is that it underplays the extent of the inequity.
The gender health gap, for instance, refers to the glaring disparities in healthcare between women and men. This year’s report from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey Health Institute, known as the McKinsey Report, calculated the magnitude of this gap: a staggering 75 million years of life are lost each year due to poor health or early death among women.
This isn’t just a gap; it’s a chasm that demands urgent attention.
Closing this “gap” would give the 3.9 billion women in the world today an extra seven healthy days a year, or an average of 500 days over a lifetime.
And just in case you are wondering, we may live longer than men, but we do so in much poorer health. The McKinsey Report found women spend 25 per cent more of their lives in debilitating health than men. Extraordinary, right?
It’s 2024, and we still live in a society where our health outcomes are impacted by gender. Why? Because women remain under studied, under diagnosed and under treated compared to men.
Let’s explore the “gaps” that have led to a gaping hole in women’s healthcare.
We are under studied
The women’s health gap stems from a persistent data gap.
Data has historically been collected from men and generalised to women. This means women’s specific symptoms and markers for diagnosis have not been captured. The lack of data also means there is an underestimation of disease severity and the health burden for women.
Take chronic pain, for example. Seventy per cent of those affected by chronic pain are women, yet 80 per cent of pain studies are conducted on male mice or human men. Ouch! It won’t surprise you to learn that we are now seeing an emerging body of evidence which shows a gender bias in the measurement of pain. Women’s pain is routinely under-investigated and undertreated, leading to serious clinical and psychological implications.
The lack of sex-disaggregated data also puts women at risk. Women are much more likely than men to experience adverse events or reactions from approved medicines. Why? Because the evidence for intervention effectiveness is often not drawn from representative populations.
The data gap doesn’t just impact the care women receive but also the investment in women’s health. How do we incentivise investment to fix a problem if we don’t know it exists, or the true extent of it? Let’s look at endometriosis and menopause. We know the prevalence of these conditions are underestimated, which means investors will underestimate the market potential of these conditions and underinvest.
We are under diagnosed and under treated
Women continue to face barriers to timely and accurate diagnosis, with the McKinsey Report finding evidence of significant and systematic differences in how women are assessed and diagnosed compared to men.
A study in Denmark showed that women were diagnosed later than men for more than 700 diseases. For cancer, it took women two and a half more years to be diagnosed than men. For diabetes, it took women four and a half years longer to be diagnosed.
Endometriosis exemplifies the devastating reality of diagnostic delays and their implications for women’s health outcomes. Women with endometriosis typically face a diagnostic delay of 7-10 years, despite more frequent GP and accident and emergency attendances than women without the disease.
The inequity goes beyond reproductive health. The McKinsey Report found that compared with men, women who present the same condition may not receive the same evidence-based care. One study found women were up to seven times more likely than men to have a heart condition misdiagnosed and be discharged during a heart attack. Women cardiac patients are also less likely to prescribed secondary prevention to reduce the risk of further events upon discharge. This contributes to women being twice as likely to die from a serious heart attack than men.
In 2021, the Australia Talks Survey found that women were twice as likely to be dismissed by their doctor than men. In our health system, it seems women are neither seen nor heard when it comes to their healthcare. It’s another gap in a long line of gaps that women have to contend with, and frankly, we’re sick of it. The systemic disregard for women’s health must end now.
Health and wealth are inextricably linked
Closing the gender health gap is not just a matter of equity but one of economics. The McKinsey Report found that addressing the 25% more time that women spend in “poor health” relative to men would not only improve the health and lives of millions of women but could also boost the global economy by at least $1 trillion annually by 2040.
The McKinsey Report found for every $1 invested in women’s health, there would be around $3 in economic growth. It predicted that treating conditions such as Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has the potential to contribute $115 billion to the global economy.
You see, healthy women are productive women. The McKinsey Report also found that by closing the women’s health gap, which equates to 75 million years of life due to poor health or early death, could generate the equivalent impact of 137 million women accessing full-time positions by 2040.
Living in poor health doesn’t just impact you physically and mentally, it impacts your earning potential. Women are most likely to be affected by a sex-specific condition during their working years. This impacts her ability to be present and/or productive in the workforce, at home, and in the community and reduces her earning potential. We lose 10 per cent of women prematurely from the workforce each year due to menopause. Closing the women’s health gap could be transformational for women’s economic empowerment.
It’s not just our earning potential that is impacted, it’s the financial cost of managing these conditions, in which women tend to bear the bigger burden. In trying to find treat my endometriosis, I’ve spent thousands of dollars in surgeries, supplements and treatment. This is a huge financial impost, making treatment completely inaccessible for some women.
If I was Adam instead of Anna, that’s money I could have invested in my future, and time I could have spent progressing my career.
Addressing inequity through investment
According to the McKinsey Report, the key to closing the “gap” is investing in women’s health specifically through investing in women-centric research and development. We must also strengthen the collection and analysis of sex and gender disaggregated data and enhance access to gender-specific care. We know reliable data is critical to increasing investment. Artificial intelligence also poses a new age risk to perpetuating gender bias in data and must be mitigated.
From a public policy perspective, we need to consider ways to encourage investment in women’s health innovation from both the private and public sectors.
In 2020, only one per cent of healthcare research and innovation was invested in female-specific conditions beyond oncology. The startups making the top deals in the past four years mainly focus on men’s sexual and overall health. For example, funding for companies focusing on erectile dysfunction was six times greater than for companies focused on endometriosis.
So, why can’t investment in women’s health reach the lofty heights of Viagra? We know there is a huge unmet need and prevalence of conditions affecting women like endometriosis and menopause. This translates into a significant market opportunity. It’s time investors wake up and realise that funding women’s health isn’t just about fairness—it’s about tapping into a vast, underserved market with enormous potential.
Given the broader economic and community benefits of improving women’s health outcomes, governments certainly have a role to play. The McKinsey Report suggests governments could explore policies that encourage sex and gender responsive health research and services, like providing tax incentives, earmarking funds, lowering application fees and expediting the drug approval process.
Beyond the need for serious investment, McKinsey recommends the use of protocols that set standards of equity and diversity, including guidelines regarding disaggregation of data by sex and gender in research studies and health surveys.
Women deserve the same quality of care as men, but that care may need to be provided differently. This is why it’s important that medical curriculums and training also reflect sex and gender differences.
Equity in health gives us a fighting chance at equity in wealth. I strongly believe that addressing the gender health “gap” is not just important—it’s an integral pillar of achieving true gender equality.
Who’s with me?