Women lose 25% more of life to poor health as investment lags

Women spend 25 per cent more of their lives in poor health than men due in part to disproportionately low investment, a new report has revealed.

Collectively, women lose around 75 million years of healthy life each year, equivalent to a week of health lost per woman annually, the report found.

Women and girls make up 49 per cent of the global population, and while they live longer than men, investment in their health is narrowly focused on a handful of therapeutic areas.

The new report by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group found that women’s health receives only six per cent of total private healthcare investment, while companies focused exclusively on women’s health attract less than one per cent.

Trish Stroman from Boston Consulting Group and Shyam Bishen from the World Economic Forum wrote in the report: “Gender equality has advanced, yet the gap between health outcomes for men and women remains substantial.”

Between 2020 and 2025, total healthcare private-sector funding totalled US$2.87 trillion. Of this, women’s health received US$175bn, or six per cent.

Funding remains heavily concentrated in reproductive health, women’s cancers and maternal care, which account for roughly 80 per cent of identified funding events and 90 per cent of identified capital during that period.

By contrast, high-prevalence conditions such as endometriosis, menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome (a hormonal disorder affecting the ovaries) and menstrual health represent less than two per cent of the identified women’s health budget.

Five gender-specific conditions, namely endometriosis, maternal health, premenstrual syndrome, menopause and cervical cancer, account for 14 per cent of the female disease burden but have received less than one per cent of relevant research funding in recent years.

An analysis by international financial services firm Alantra found that women’s health companies captured just two per cent of the US$41.2bn in venture health-tech funding in 2023.

Research by Boston Consulting Group showed that proper screening and better care for women in the US, focusing only on four conditions (menopause, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease), could unlock more than US$100bn in market value.

Despite regulatory mandates and policy initiatives, women remain systematically underrepresented in clinical trials across major disease areas.

Harvard Medical School researchers analysing 1,433 clinical trials involving 302,664 participants found that women comprised only 41.2 per cent of participants on average, below their representation in most disease populations.

Sania Nishtar from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, speaking during a panel on women’s health at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2026, said: “The challenge is that you have to translate science and evidence into policy and then policy into pilots and then pilots into scalable delivery.”

She added that innovation has to be matched with delivery capability and sustainable financing to achieve the intended impact.