$1 Trillion USD, annually. That’s how much economic growth the world could see by 2040 if the gender gap in healthcare was addressed. With women living over 25% of their lives in poor health, compared to men and making up nearly half of the global population, only 5% of global R&D fundings goes to women’s health research. Stark figures, that need to change.
Women’s health is currently enjoying a rare moment in the spotlight; high profile celebrities and social media influencers are speaking openly on menopause, fertility challenges and endometriosis. Femtech investment has surged, media coverage has increased, and some countries like Spain, now offer paid period leave. On the surface, this looks like progress, yet beneath this renewed interest lies an uncomfortable truth: the gender health gap persists, with substantial impacts on society and the economy.
The gender healthcare gap is a compounded result of decades of underinvestment, data biases and policy changes that have treated women’s health as niche issues – rather than core contributors to global population health and economic growth.
Define: The Gender Health Gap
The gender health gap encompasses the systematic differences in how women’s health conditions are diagnosed & treated, and how much funding their research receives. Evidence shows that women spend 25% more time in poor health than men, are more likely to have their symptoms dismissed or minimised, and often experience longer waiting times for diagnosis or treatment – particularly for chronic conditions. Conditions such as endometriosis, autoimmune disease and dementia disproportionately affect women yet remain consistently under-researched, under-funded, under-diagnosed and insufficiently treated.
This reality exists because the health system has historically focused on male physiology and disease patterns, leaving the other half of the population behind – from research priorities, clinical trials and reimbursement structures.
This article focuses on three major conditions that illustrate the gender health gap: Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)/Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). With each case study, I will address key socioeconomic concerns which will highlight the need for policy and funding shifts and advocacy for women’s health.
I want to preface this by stating this article only touches the surface. There are a number of conditions where the gender health gap has significant health and socioeconomic impacts – for a more extensive analysis, I refer you to the groundbreaking report by The World Economic Forum in collaboration with the McKinsey Health Institute published in 2025.
Case Study 1: CVD (disorders of the heart and blood vessels)
Women are over 96% more likely to receive a misdiagnosis when presenting with CVD symptoms, compared to men – asthma, depression or acid reflux are the top three incorrect diagnoses they receive. Women also wait an average of 20 weeks for a formal diagnosis after their initial GP presentation, compared to men who wait an average of 3.6 weeks. As a result, men are understood to develop the disease earlier whilst women develop the disease later, but also face higher mortality rates and complications due to delays and mis-diagnosis. This is not because their cardiovascular conditions are different – but because the system fails to recognise them.
CVD is one of the leading causes of death in women in the UK, yet the clinical approach of diagnosis and intervention is based on presentations in men. Whilst men typically present with chest pain or pressure, women present atypically with shortness of breath, fatigue, jaw pain or nausea – atypical presentations of the same disease, but because they deviate from the traditional male prototype, they’re dismissed.
A study published in the Lancet found that women are more likely than men to have their initial presentations dismissed as anxiety or stress, rather than thoroughly investigated as cardiac events. Studies have also shown that women receive ECGs and angiographies later than men and as a result, interventions later too. Exacerbating the problem is that the diagnostic range for blood cardiac markers like troponins, is set at male physiological levels and so women’s abnormal results don’t meet the diagnostic requirements. These delays represent years of missed opportunities and improved outcomes.
The evidence gap compounds this, as women remain underrepresented in cardiovascular diseases clinical trials representing only one third of participants in cardiology trials – despite women representing half of the population. As a result, the evidence on how cardiovascular drugs work, their dosage, and related side effects are all (once again) largely based on male physiology. Women’s metabolism is vastly different to men’s, and hormonal factors affect drug efficacy. And so systematically, women’s cardiovascular diseases are both under-recognised and under-researched.
For CVD specifically, the policy gap is clear: clinical training for emergency and primary care staff on female symptom presentations, validation of diagnostic algorithms and risk assessment tools for women, and accountability for diagnostic delays. Without these changes, women will continue to have their CVD symptoms dismissed and sent home from the emergency room, only to present more severely further down the line. The system needs to accurately recognise and act on female symptom presentations in acute settings.
Case Study 2: PCOS/PMOS
PCOS has long been understood as a reproductive and hormonal condition, defining decades of research funding, clinical training, and patient management to focus on fertility rather than metabolic health. In May 2026, PCOS was formally renamed to PMOS (Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome) to reflect what the evidence has shown us for years: this is at its core, a metabolic disorder affecting insulin regulation, not just a reproductive issue. With the name change comes the need for updated clinical practice guidelines, funding priorities, and improved patient literacy to catch up and observe PMOS through a metabolic lens.
1 in 8 women are affected by PMOS worldwide, with an estimate of over 70% of women unaware of their condition. The confusion in classification has been attributed to the array of symptoms that women present: irregular periods, acne, weight gain, abdominal pain of varying severities and hirsutism (excess hair on the face and body). When women present these symptoms in the clinic, they are often offered hormonal contraception or weight management regimes; neither of which adequately address the core metabolic issue of insulin resistance, which accounts for the majority of cases. As a result, women leave the clinic without understanding their PMOS diagnosis or what it means for their metabolic health, fertility options, or their long-term health trajectory. They are left to manage a condition they do not fully understand.
Exacerbating these long term health conditions is the diagnostic delay; in a survey conducted by the PMOS charity Verity, 34% of women said they waited longer than 4 years for an official PMOS diagnosis. Those 4 years represent prolonged, unmanaged metabolic complications which increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes, CVD and metabolic syndrome. 4 years of missed early intervention opportunities such as lifestyle modifications, metformin, or other preventative therapies which would reduce or delay complications.
It’s critical to also consider the economic cost women accumulate through missed days at work due to irregular periods and fatigue, out-of-pocket costs on acne management and laser hair removal to manage hirsutism, and fertility treatments when planning pregnancy. Career progression is delayed and social withdrawal and reduced self-esteem from body image concerns impact social contributions and long-term earnings potential. Simply put, the diagnostic delay millions of women with PMOS face significantly impacts their quality of life.
The research landscape mirrors the classification problem. Despite PMOS affecting millions of women worldwide, research investments remain minimal – as a comparative example, I found no defined NIHR funding stream for PMOS, but there is a NIHR-funded NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme. A stark difference for conditions that have a similar metabolic foundation, both affecting millions of women. The disparity is not explained by prevalence or impact, but reflects what gets classified as medically important. A women’s-only health condition gets less research focus than a gender neutral condition in a similar category.
With the 2026 name change, clinical practice has a lot of catching up to do – how PMOS is taught in medical schools, how research is commissioned and funded, how presentations are managed in the clinic and what manner of support will be provided for long-term metabolic health management. Until these changes occur, millions of women will continue to independently navigate a condition that the healthcare system has fundamentally misunderstood, despite the capacity to be managed with early intervention.
Case Study 3: ADHD
ADHD is diagnosed 5 years later in women compared to men, despite similar symptoms presented at the same stage in life. This delay is largely attributed to clinical biases – diagnostic criteria are based on male presentations for whom ADHD is usually diagnosed between 11-23 years old. Women on the other hand are diagnosed between 16-29 years old due to a limited understanding of this “male” condition, and so are often overlooked. Whilst boys present with hyperactivity, girls present with lack of attention.
There is a general lack of research exploring how the life and career trajectory is altered as a result of a late ADHD diagnosis in women. However, studies have found that ADHD in adults leads to work-related impairments in men, and social-related impairments for women – which could be attributed to the lack of formal diagnosis and appropriate management at the early stages of development i.e. at school. Furthermore, delayed diagnosis in women has lasting impacts on long-term clinical outcomes including anxiety and depression as well as lifestyle factors including driving and career progression. Internal disorganisation, executive dysfunction and the mental strain of independently enforcing coping strategies has severe consequences on adult relationships and social contributions. One misdiagnosis, a cascade of challenges.
Improved public and professional understanding of ADHD presentations in boys vs girls is vital, with the foundation being increased representation of girls in related studies to understand the varied presentation profiles, compared to boys. The aged diagnostic criteria needs validation in girls, followed by re-training of healthcare professionals (and where possible, parents and teachers through educational parent’s evening-style sessions at school) would enable early identification of ADHD in girls and prevent the cascade they often see much later in life.
The Gender Health Gap is Not Inevitable
CVD, PMOS and ADHD represent a small segment of the healthcare system which continues to fail women through different mechanisms. Women with CVD have acute symptoms dismissed in emergency departments because the diagnostic criteria was built on male presentations, women with PMOS wait years for a formal diagnosis because the condition was incorrectly classified as reproductive rather than metabolic, and girls with ADHD are overlooked because the diagnostic criteria focuses on hyperactivity presented in boys rather than the attention deficiencies common in girls. Three conditions, three different failures, one systemic problem: the healthcare system was built on male presentations, ignoring the other half of the population. The result: a system built on incomplete data.
This is not a knowledge gap. Guidelines exist and extensive training materials are available. Yet system failure persists because they are embedded in the foundation of medicine – women were systematically excluded from clinical trials until regulatory changes in the 1990s, diagnostic criteria and drug dosages have primarily been based on male physiology and research funding has followed male-centric conditions. This is reflected in clinical training, globally.
The gender gap consequences are measurable: diagnostic delays measured in years, preventable complications, lost productivity, out-of-pocket costs, and altered career trajectories due to a late diagnosis. These costs accumulate during women’s peak earning years and have compounding lifetime impacts. Yet, these costs remain largely invisible in policy discussions on healthcare resource allocation and research priorities.
Closing the gender health gap requires more than awareness. It requires structural reform: diagnostic criteria validated across genders, research funding proportional to disease burden, prevention frameworks for conditions that disproportionately affect women and clinical training that recognises female symptom presentations irrespective of male presentations. Policymakers and experts need to consistently assess whether the healthcare system they have designed, can recognise and manage conditions in female bodies.
The gender health gap should not be a $1 Trillion value. But it is the result of specific design choices made when women were excluded from fundamental medical research. Changing it requires not just strategic awareness campaigns, but forced restructuring of the systems that created the gap in the first place.
Arussa Beyond the Bench. 
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