Women’s health affects half the world’s population, and yet it remains one of the most neglected areas of modern medicine, agreed healthcare leaders on the second day of the World Health Expo in Dubai. Conversations
around the importance of investing in women’s health took centre stage at the Frontier platform on Tuesday, where two UK health leaders argued that the gender health gap is not a knowledge problem, but a failure of investment, design and accountability.
Opening the session, Kate Lancaster, Chief Executive Officer of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, described a system that continues to underserve women at every stage of life.
“Women are really struggling to access healthcare systems that have not been built around their needs,” she said. “These structural disparities shape outcomes across a woman’s entire lifespan — and they deepen further when race, disability and geography are layered on top.”
The consequences are measurable and severe. Women make up 50% of the global population, yet receive less than 5% of global health research funding. Analysis cited by Lancaster showed that less than 1% of healthcare research and innovation funding is directed towards female-specific conditions outside oncology.
“It was not until 1993 that women were formally required to be included in clinical trials,” she said. “Many drugs in use today were never properly tested on women, and that legacy still shapes outcomes.”
The data is sobering. In the UK, it takes an average of nine years to diagnose endometriosis. Up to 80% of women globally will develop fibroids by age 50, yet diagnosis and treatment pathways remain inconsistent and inequitable. Research supported by the British Heart Foundation has shown women are 50% more likely than men to have a heart attack misdiagnosed. “Unsurprisingly, women live 25% more of their lives in ill health than men,” Lancaster said. “That holds all of us back.”
Globally, the picture is even more alarming. Only 43% of births in low- and middleincome countries are attended by skilled health professionals. Every two minutes, a woman dies from pregnancy or childbirthrelated complications. Meanwhile, 160 million women of reproductive age still lack access to contraception, and one in three women globally experiences gender-based violence.
“Women’s health is not only a moral imperative, but an economic one,” said Lancaster, highlighting a McKinsey study that states that closing the women’s health gap could unlock $1 trillion annually by 2040. In the UK alone, absenteeism linked to menstrual disorders and gynaecological conditions costs nearly £11 billion a year, Lancaster noted. “For every pound invested in obstetrics and gynaecology, the return is £11,” she said. “It does beg the question why governments are not doing more.”
”Give women choice, context and agency. If we do not design health systems that give an extra leg up to the people we are not serving well, inequality simply persists. Menopause care exposes that gap“
Support during menopausal transition
In another talk, Dr Sue Mann, National Clinical Director for Women’s Health at the NHS England, continued the theme of women’s health and focused on menopause, which is one of the most misunderstood transitions in a woman’s life.
“Menopause is contentious, and it should not be,” Mann said. “It is not a disease. It is a transition. And treating it purely as something to ‘fix’ does women a disservice.”
Menopause intersects with critical health trajectories, such as cardiovascular, bone and neurocognitive, and it needs intervention, Dr Mann said, adding, “We spend too much time pulling people out of the river at the bottom, treating symptoms, when we should be going upstream to create a healthier population.”
She warned against reducing menopause to hormone replacement therapy alone, noting that decades of silence have left women fighting simply to be heard. “We need to move from a disease model to an empowerment model,” she said. “Meet women where they are. Give them choice, context and agency. If we do not design
health systems that give an extra leg up to the people we are not serving well, inequality simply persists. Menopause care exposes that gap clearly, who gets care, who does not, and why equity, not equality, has to be the goal.”
The workplace implications are significant. Around one-third of women are menopausal, 80% of them are in work, and nearly half say symptoms affect their performance. Yet 47% feel unable to talk about it due to stigma. “This is when women are often at their peak, leading, caregiving, carrying responsibility,” Mann said. “If we do not support them, we lose not just productivity, but potential.”
Mann highlighted practical system reforms already underway in England, which includes embedding enopause conversations into routine health checks to group consultations and digital care models, as examples of how access can be widened without over-medicalising the transition.
Mann concluded by saying women’s health is not a niche, it is the unfinished business of global healthcare.
