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Listening to pain: What eight women taught me about the state of women’s health in the UK
By Ruby Raut, founder & CEO, WUKA
It’s Ruby here, founder of WUKA and, like many of you, someone who’s been dismissed, doubted, and left waiting far too long when it comes to menstrual health.
Last week, I spoke at an event hosted by the Menstrual Health Project. It wasn’t just another panel or pitch session; it was a wake-up call.
The room was filled with GPs, pharmacists, educators, innovators, and women who have lived the daily reality of conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, PMDD, and premature ovarian insufficiency.
We weren’t there to celebrate solutions. We were there to listen. And what we heard broke us open.
The Stories Behind the Statistics
I walked out of that room with one page of notes — not data, not theory, but pain in ink.
The stories were raw and repetitive. Women told us of:
- 14 years of seeking help and getting none.
- 3 decades of living in pain.
- Being laughed at for wanting to come off contraception.
- Being told to “just go on the pill.”
- Waiting for a laparoscopy since 2015, and still waiting in 2025.
- Being asked to gain weight to get a period or lose weight to manage PCOS.
- Being offered pregnancy as a “solution.”
- Losing jobs because of endometriosis.
This is not an isolated list of frustrations. It’s a mirror reflecting the state of women’s health in the UK today.
Behind every statistic, there’s a woman who has rearranged her life around pain, missed promotions, cancelled plans, and lost trust in her own body.
The System Is Failing Us, and We Know It
Hearing these stories, I couldn’t help but think of it like a leaking roof.
You notice the drip, you report it, but you’re told it’s nothing serious, to just wait it out.
Days turn into months, months into years. By the time someone finally takes a proper look, the ceiling has collapsed.
That’s what living with an untreated women’s health condition feels like, small symptoms dismissed until they become impossible to ignore. That’s what our healthcare system is doing to women.
We don’t have a lack of data, we have a lack of listening.
When women describe pain, the system translates it into exaggeration. When they ask for options, they get the same recycled advice: “Go on the pill.”
The medical model still treats menstruation as a niche, not a vital sign.
And that’s why listening matters. Because until we treat lived experience as evidence, we’ll keep designing systems that ignore reality.
Learning from Lived Experience
As founders, practitioners, and advocates, we often talk about innovation, new tech, better diagnostics, smarter apps. But innovation without empathy is just noise.
Listening to eight women share their stories of endometriosis, PCOS, and PMDD reminded me of something fundamental: we can’t fix what we refuse to feel.
It takes courage to speak about periods, pain, infertility, and loss in a room full of professionals.
Yet these women did, not because they wanted sympathy, but because they wanted change.
Their words carried a collective message: “We don’t need to be fixed, we need to be heard.”
The Change We Need
So, what would change actually look like?
- Menstrual health education in medical schools.
Not as a module, but as a mainstream subject. Every GP, nurse, and specialist should understand menstrual health the way they understand blood pressure. - Inclusive menopause and menstrual support, for all ages, all bodies.
Menstrual and menopausal health should not be separate conversations. Hormonal health spans a lifetime. - Accessible care at every level.
Support should start at the local pharmacy, not five years into a diagnosis journey. Pharmacists and primary care teams can be the first line of empathy and intervention. - Private and public health insurance that covers menstrual conditions.
No woman should have to choose between financial stability and pain management. - Policy change that protects and respects women’s health.
We need national recognition that menstrual health is not a luxury — it’s a basic human right.
What Listening Really Means
Listening is not passive. It’s radical.
It means staying in the discomfort of someone else’s pain long enough to see the system that caused it. It means asking, not assuming. It means holding space before we offer solutions.
The Menstrual Health Project event reminded me that we can’t rely on numbers alone. Data gives us proof. Stories give us purpose. And when you combine both, that’s when transformation begins.
Why WUKA Cares
At WUKA, we started with period underwear, but what we’re really building is period equity.
Every conversation, campaign, and product we create is rooted in one belief: women deserve better.
Better care. Better education. Better respect.
Because menstrual health is not a side issue. It’s a social justice issue. It’s about the right to live without shame, without silence, and without suffering that’s dismissed as “normal.”
If you’re someone living with any of this, endometriosis, PCOS, PMDD, or anything that makes you feel unseen, I see you. You are not alone. You deserve better, and we will keep fighting for you.
Let’s listen louder. Let’s care deeper. Let’s make menstrual health mainstream.
With you always,
Ruby x
Founder & CEO, WUKA
P.S. Check out the incredible work of the Menstrual Health Project. They’re not just raising awareness, they’re rebuilding the narrative.
The Scottish government has launched a national review into whether NHS IVF access should be extended to single women.
The review will also consider whether wider access should be offered to couples who have children from previous relationships.
Health secretary Angela Constance said: “Access to NHS IVF treatment should be fair, timely and reflect the way people’s lives and families look today.”
Most single women are not currently eligible for NHS IVF treatment in Scotland.
Campaigners have welcomed the review.
Katie Rollings of Fertility Action said: “It’s an essential and long-awaited decision that will impact a huge number of people who are struggling to grow their families.
She said there is “no evidence” that having two parents rather than one determines whether a child will thrive.
She added: “What matters is whether a child is loved, safe, supported and has stable, positive relationships around them.”
Figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority show Scotland is the only UK nation where NHS-funded IVF cycles outnumber privately funded cycles.
In 2024, more than 6,000 cycles of fertility treatment were carried out among more than 4,000 patients in Scotland. Both figures were slightly lower than the record highs recorded in 2022.
The past 20 years have also seen a rise in the number of same-sex female couples and single women receiving fertility treatment.
In 2024, 625 IVF cycles were carried out for women in same-sex couples in Scotland, with more than one third funded by the NHS.
There were 330 cycles involving single women, of which 50 were NHS-funded.
In England, single women can access IVF through the NHS, although eligibility varies according to the local health trust’s policy.
Current Scottish rules state that couples are eligible if they have been living in a stable relationship for two years and neither partner has been sterilised.
Couples where one partner already has a child can be eligible, but those where both partners have children from previous relationships are not.
Eligibility rules also require a body mass index above 18.5 and below 30, and state that couples must not smoke, drink alcohol or take drugs during treatment. The mother must be under 42.
The Scottish government said the review would also examine consistency of access to fertility preservation, including during cancer treatment, as well as reducing waiting times for donor eggs and sperm.
Same-sex female couples already have access to NHS IVF, but they can face long waits for donor eggs or sperm, as can heterosexual couples who require donor treatment.
The National Fertility Group will lead the review and make “costed, demand-modelled recommendations”, which are due to be published by early summer 2027.
The group will include fertility experts from Scotland’s four NHS-assisted conception units in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.
Prof Sarah Martins Da Silva, an NHS consultant and chair of fertility medicine at Dundee University, said there were questions to be answered in a resource-stretched NHS.
“As a fertility specialist I’m never going to be disappointed if the criteria is widened,” she said.
“But with single people, as an NHS clinician looking at the competing demands we have, I’d ask the question about whether being single is a health condition that needs to be funded.”
Da Silva said NHS waiting lists were full of couples who require donated eggs or sperm because of medical conditions including cancer and could face longer waits.
“It’s slightly a disservice to them,” she said.
“There would need to be a real investment and resource without making everybody wait an extraordinary long time.
“With the current financial environment we work in, if you’re talking about new money, where would that come from?”
She said she would welcome changes that encouraged more people to donate eggs or sperm and questioned whether arguments about children needing two parents were necessarily relevant to the debate.
“On the one hand bringing up a child is quite an expensive process, and if you don’t have that support, it can be very difficult.
“But on the other hand, many people start off as a couple and divorce.”
Da Silva also welcomed plans for the review to consider eligibility for couples who already have children, describing the move as “fantastic”.
The FDA has granted accelerated approval to AstraZeneca drug Etcamah for certain adults with advanced breast cancer carrying an ESR1 mutation.
Etcamah, also known as camizestrant, was approved in combination with a CDK4/6 inhibitor, either abemaciclib, palbociclib or ribociclib.
The treatment is for adults with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer when an estrogen receptor-1 (ESR1) mutation is detected during aromatase inhibitor and CDK4/6 inhibitor therapy using an FDA-authorised test.
ESR1 mutations are acquired resistance mutations that tumours may develop during treatment with aromatase inhibitors, a type of endocrine therapy commonly used as a front-line treatment for locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.
Fewer than 5 per cent of patients have the mutation when HR-positive metastatic breast cancer is diagnosed, according to the FDA. After disease progression on an aromatase inhibitor, nearly 40 per cent have the mutation.
Acting FDA commissioner Kyle Diamantas said: “Women living with metastatic breast cancer face an uphill battle as their tumors continuously evolve to escape treatment.
“We owe them every weapon in our arsenal.
“Today’s approval delivers a win to these patients by granting them a targeted therapy designed specifically to overcome resistance, giving them more time before their disease progresses.”
The accelerated approval programme allows earlier approval of drugs that treat serious conditions and fill an unmet medical need based on surrogate or intermediate endpoints.
For Etcamah, approval was based on how long patients lived without their disease worsening, measured from when the resistance mutation was first detected in their blood.
The FDA said it has not yet been confirmed whether intervening when the mutation is detected, rather than waiting until disease progression is confirmed, results in a clinically meaningful benefit. Confirmatory studies are therefore required to verify and describe clinical benefit.
Angelo de Claro, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence, said: “I commend both the FDA and the sponsor for their commitment to advancing cancer care and securing this accelerated approval.
“This marks the first FDA approval of a cancer therapy guided by the detection of a resistance mutation in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) before imaging tests show that the disease is progressing.
“But additional evidence is needed to confirm clinical benefit.”
Circulating tumour DNA, or ctDNA, consists of small pieces of tumour DNA released into the blood and can allow earlier molecular detection of resistance mutations.
The FDA also authorised the Guardant360 CDx assay as a companion diagnostic to identify patients with breast cancer who have ESR1 mutations for treatment with camizestrant.
Efficacy was assessed in a clinical trial comparing a switch to Etcamah plus a CDK4/6 inhibitor with continued treatment using an aromatase inhibitor plus a CDK4/6 inhibitor.
Estimated median progression-free survival was 16 months in the Etcamah group, compared with 9.2 months in the aromatase inhibitor group.
Etcamah’s prescribing information includes a boxed warning about the risk of irregular heart rhythm when taken with certain other medicines. It also includes warnings about an abnormally slow heart rate and potential harm to an unborn baby.
The FDA convened its Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee for the application on 30 April 2026.
Entrepreneur
Last chance to save on Women’s Health Week and Women’s Sport Summit: Early Bird pricing ends 11 September
Early bird pricing for W Group’s two flagship October summits – Women’s Health Week Europe 2026 and Women’s Sport Summit Europe 2026 – closes on 11 September.
Both events take place at Emirates Stadium, London, bringing together founders, investors, corporates, and industry leaders shaping the future of women’s health and sport.
Women’s Health Week Europe 2026
7-8 October | Emirates Stadium, London
This year’s edition will be Women’s Health Week Europe biggest one yet: with 700+ attendees, 80+ speakers, and 20+ sponsors, it will also feature two stages – a Global Stage covering market trends and policy, and a Scale Stage focused on company-level growth and commercialisation. WHW takes place across two days of content, business matchmaking, and dealmaking.
Agenda highlights include:
- Where Capital Flows: Funding Trends in Women’s Health – with Merete Clausen (EIF), Ekaterina Gianelli (Calm/Storm), Henriette Hessen (Verdane), Jemma Day (British Business Bank), Ravit Warsha Dor (Telus Global Ventures), Tim Davis (LSEG)
- Six Feet Under-funded: Surviving the Valley of Death in Women’s Health – with Patric Stenberg (Gesynta Pharma), Valentina Milanova (Daye), Amber Vodegel (28x)
- The Women’s Health Label – Gift or Curse? · Live Debate – with Juan Camilo Arjona Ferreira (organon), Marissa Fayer (DeepLook Medical), Christian Lautner (Heal Capital), Annie Theriault (CBIV), Ida Tin (Clue)
- Passport to Scale: Taking Your Women’s Health Business Global – with Vanessa Carpenter (Femtech Across Borders), Annie Theriault (CBIV), Victorine Lançon (Daya Ventures), Dr Mridula Pore (Peppy)
Early bird pricing (ends 11 September):
| Ticket type | Early bird | Standard |
| Startups, Scaleups, Investors, Non-Profits, Government | £599 + VAT | £699 + VAT |
| Corporates, Payors & Providers | £1,799 + VAT | £1,999 + VAT |
| Service Providers & Consultants | £3,299 + VAT | £3,499 + VAT |
Register for Women’s Health Week Europe | See the full agenda for WHW
Women’s Sport Summit Europe 2026
6 October | Emirates Stadium, London
The first-ever Women’s Sport Summit expands W Group’s expertise in connecting key decision-makers to the sports industry.
WSS brings together rights holders, brands, investors, athletes, and media to accelerate commercial growth across the sector.
Agenda highlights include:
- From capital to crowd: the women’s sport cycle at scale – with Omar Shaikh (Arsenal FC), Nicole McWilliams (Google), Kerstin Lutz (Mercury13), Jo Currie (BBC Sport)
- Women’s sport through the investor lens: what gets funded – and why – Hugo Sever (APEX Capital)
- Rethinking ROI: what are we measuring that doesn’t actually matter? – Fi Watherston (Metro Bank), Silvia Keiser (Billie Jean King Cup), Gabriel Akin-Odujobi (Crux Football), Tammy Parlour (WST)
- Beyond the 90 minutes: matchday as a commercial product, not just a fixture – Maggie Murphy (Aston Villa Women FC), Sam Feasey (Diageo/Guinness), Molly Miller (OneFootball), Megan Feringa (The Athletic/The New York Times)
Early bird pricing (ends 11 September):
| Ticket type | Early bird | Standard |
| General Pass | £299 + VAT | £399 + VAT |
| Service Providers & Consultants | £1,799 + VAT | £1,999 + VAT |
Register for Women’s Sport Summit Europe | See the full agenda for WSS
Attending both events?
For group tickets or to attend both summits this October, contact Callum, W Group’s Client Success Lead, at [email protected].
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