- Conference
- 2025 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 18 October 2024
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference, it is well noted that on average women live longer than men, yet women spend greater portions of their lives in ill health, make fewer visits to their GPs, receive less health monitoring, and take more potentially harmful medication.
The gender health gap refers to the disparities in health outcomes and access to healthcare services. Women, transgender, and non-binary people often face unique health challenges that are frequently overlooked or inadequately addressed in healthcare systems.
Trans men and many non-binary people can still experience gynaecological and reproductive health needs. Trans women and many non-binary people will require breast screening. And gender affirming care is not fit for purpose, with waiting lists being measured in years!
This gap is driven by various factors, including:
• Socioeconomic disparities: Economic barriers often limit access to healthcare for marginalized genders.
• Cultural and Social Norms: Stigmas and biases can prevent individuals from seeking necessary medical care.
• Lack of Research: health research has historically focused on male subjects, leading to a lack of understanding of female and non-binary health needs.
• Inadequate Healthcare services: many healthcare systems do not provide comprehensive services that cater to the diverse needs of all genders.
The stat of the UK’s gender health gap is backed up by a list of galling stats. It is estimated that 1 in 3 women in the UK suffer from Reproductive or Gynaecological health issues, yet less than 2.5% of publicly funded research is dedicated to reproductive Health. Yet 5 times more funding goes into erectile disfunction, which only affects 19% of men, than into premenstrual syndrome, which affects 90% of women.
For decades, women experiencing symptoms relating to reproductive or gynaecological health have been dismissed or overlooked, often being tole “we should just put up with it”. This has led to women receiving poor treatment, dangerous misdiagnosis, and preventable deaths.
A recent study by Manchester Metropolitan University found women with endometriosis, a condition that affects 1.5 million women in the UK, were being “medically gaslit”, with most feeling dismissed and ignored when accessing support. Barriers faced by women with this condition included a lack of medical understanding and a postcode lottery around the quality of care.
Studies also show that there are layers of discrimination within women’s health; there are also disparities by race, class, disability, and postcode. If you are a black woman, you are 4 times more likely to die within 6 weeks of giving birth compared to a white woman. Black women are less likely to be included in health research compared to white women.
Caroline Criado Perez, the author of “invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men” states that the problem is patriarchal world views that is prevalent in our healthcare system. Her research reveals that women are routinely underrepresented in clinical trials and that medical research proposed by women for women, is not allotted the same funding as medical research proposed by men for men.
According to Dr Irving Zucker, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, for decades, women have been excluded from clinical drug trials, partly due to unfounded concerns that women’s hormonal fluctuations make them difficult to study. Until the early 1990s, women of childbearing age were kept out of trial studies due to concerns about exposing pregnant women to drugs and risking damage to their foetuses.
In a report commissioned by the Women’s Brain Project, a non-profit based in Switzerland, it was found that women are also under-represented in clinical trials in oncology and neurology. Other research shows funding for many conditions that exclusively or disproportionately affect women is significantly lower than for those affecting men.
Therefore, conference calls upon the national womens committee to
• Work with labour link to lobby government and the health minister to allocate resources that focuses on the health needs of women, transgender, and non-binary individuals to inform evidence-based healthcare practices.
• Work with labour link to lobby government and the health minister to implement policies to ensure that women, transgender, and non-binary individuals have access to comprehensive healthcare services, including reproductive health, mental health, and preventative care.
• Work with all relevant bodies to launch campaigns to educate the public about the importance of gender equality in health and the specific needs of health marginalized genders.
• Work with all relevant bodies to advocate for policies that address social determinants of health, aiming to reduce inequalities in health outcomes related to gender.
• To report back to womens conference 2026 on the work carried out so far.