“There’s a consistent theme of neglect when it comes to the health of women and AFAB individuals – amplifying their voices is key”

The gender health gap describes the disparity in health outcomes, medical attention and treatment experienced by male and female patients, says Valentina Milanova.

Research has found that women are often misdiagnosed, receive poorer medical advice and have worse medical outcomes than men.

There are many factors that contribute to this, including systemic sexism and patriarchal structures within healthcare provision and medical research.

Historically, women and assigned female at birth (AFAB) individuals have been, for the most part, excluded entirely from clinical research and trials.

It wasn’t until 1993 that a law was passed that made it illegal for clinical trials to exclude women and AFAB individuals from their recruitment practices.

What this means on a very practical level is that the majority of medications on the market today were never designed for, or tested on, the female physiology.

This includes medications that were specifically designed for women, such as the female Viagra, which was predominantly tested on men – 92 per cent of those tested were male.

The lack of research has had a significant trickle-down effect, and to this day, women’s bodies and specific health conditions continue to be misunderstood and misdiagnosed.

A study published in Nature shows that women get diagnosed with diseases far later than men. For cancer, women get diagnosed two and a half years later. For diabetes, women are diagnosed four and a half years later.

This study was based on data from over seven million Danish health records, which were obtained over the course of 21 years. The researchers discovered that women were diagnosed later than men in over 700 diseases.

Significant racial and socio-economic factors are also prevalent, leading to further inequality in the access to and medical treatment of non-white women and AFAB individuals.

Most neglected areas of women’s health

There’s a consistent theme of neglect when it comes to women’s health, and it is a hugely underfunded area of medical research.

Typically conditions such as endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), chronic pelvic pain (CPP), and dysmenorrhea or menstrual pain are often referenced as being significantly misunderstood, despite being statistically very common in women and AFAB individuals.

The majority of women (90 per cent) experience menstrual pain, yet no localised treatment has ever been developed despite researchers at the University College London revealing that period cramps can be just as painful as having a heart attack.

At the same time, male conditions like erectile dysfunction, which affects only 19 per cent of men, receive the lion’s share of clinical focus and research funding. In what world is this fair?

Another example is coronary disease, which is the leading cause of mortality in women. Yet, the heart attack diagnosis criteria are entirely based on symptoms that show in the male, not the female, physiology.

According to a British Heart Foundation study, women going through a heart attack are 50 per cent more likely than men to get misdiagnosed and turned away from emergency rooms – in part due to physicians only knowing how to recognise the typical heart attack symptoms for men.

Amplifying women’s voices in the healthcare conversation

Women and AFAB individuals’ voices and experiences need to be proactively considered within all levels of the healthcare system, including policy making.

Any acknowledgement and plan, such as the Women’s Health Strategy for England, to address the gender health gap is a significant step in the right direction.

It’s important that we keep talking and use any platform we have to elevate women’s voices within the healthcare space.

With the rise of Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms, there are low cost ways to reach, educate, and inform millions of people.

It’s also really important to destigmatise conversations around gynaecological health. A study exploring attitudes around female genital slang found that 65 per cent of respondents avoid using the words like ‘vulva’ and ‘vagina’ as they deem them embarrassing or offensive – and opt for euphemisms such as ‘fanny,’ ‘lady parts’ or ‘honey pot’ instead.

Period talk is met with similar disdain. When the UK government announced the abolition of the tampon tax earlier this year, the reaction on social media was littered with expressions of repulsion, with many insisting that the discussion should be kept ‘polite and private.’

This is a message that women and AFAB individuals have heard and internalised throughout their lives and is something that has to change.

In order to close the gender health gap, access to information is key.

The impact of digitalisation within healthcare could be huge. Any attempt to democratise access to crucial information about our bodies can ultimately help women and AFAB individuals to make more informed, better suited, medical decisions.

What Daye is doing to fight the gender health gap

At present, there is a massive gender funding gap within healthcare. For example, less than 2.5 per cent of publicly funded research is dedicated to reproductive health, despite the fact that a third of women in the UK will suffer from a reproductive or gynaecological health problem at some point in their lifetime.

Our strategy to fight the gender health gap is to invest in medical research and innovation to create products that serve long neglected gynaecological health needs.

Our vision is to use the revenues from our commercially successful products to create an evergreen source of funding for medical research. This strategy will help us fight the gender funding gap that currently exists.

Valentina Milanova is the founder of Daye, a women’s health research and development company developing products for period pain, at-home STI testing and vaginal infection treatments.