According to the United Nations (UN), investing in gender equality and increasing support for women is crucial to create prosperous economies and a healthy planet – at herea, we couldn’t agree more!
The five key areas the UN wants to address are:
- Human rights: Gender equality is the greatest human rights challenge, benefiting everyone if resolved.
- Ending poverty: Since 2020, 75 million more people have fallen into poverty due to conflicts and the pandemic. Women are disproportionally affected by this, and 342 million women and girls are expected to live in poverty by 2030 if no actions are taken.
- Gender-responsive financing: rising prices and conflicts lead 75% of countries to cut public spending by 2025 which negatively impacts women. E.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic women have been losing their job at twice the rate as men in many countries. Women are more likely to be in frontline healthcare jobs, which puts them at higher risk and results in more women relying on social security support. Moreover, issues with government support of childcare still primarily affects women.
- Green economy and care society: A shift to a green economy and care society is proposed to amplify women’s voices.
- Supporting feminist change-makers: Feminist organizations only receive 0.13% of official development assistance worldwide.
Gender-sensitive medicine plays an important part in achieving these goals.
On the path to gender equality, it is necessary to establish gender-sensitive medicine. For decades, clinical development has mostly been tailored to benefit men. Health issues that primarily or exclusively affect women are chronically underrepresented in research and historically, many drugs have only been tested in men, e.g., to avoid impacts of hormonal changes. Regulations requiring that women must be included in clinical trials are only in act since the 90s.
Menopause is a good example for the lack of knowledge around health issues that only affect women. Even among gynecologists, menopause doesn’t get much attention. Moreover, it is still considered a taboo topic in society and women affected by menopausal symptoms need to invest a lot to find accurate and helpful information and suitable treatment.
Even though menopause symptoms have a significant economic impact, only some companies start implementing occupational health management strategies to support women during this phase of life. After all, women are often at the peak of their carreer in their 40s-50s, and it can have significant impacts for a company if women have to reduce their workload due to menopausal symptoms.
Left: Impact of menopause symptoms on work ability of women between 45-60 in the US, according to a Mayo Clinic study involving 4440 participants.. Right: Economic burden resulting from missed workdays and excess health care costs due to menopause symptoms, estimated based on the study results.
A US study including 4440 women between 45-60 showed that 13.4% of them experienced at least one adverse work outcome due to menopause symptoms and 1 in 10 women missed work because of menopausal symptoms in the last 12 months. The median symptom burden was moderate, with a menopause rating scale score of 15.1. Women who experienced more severe symptoms were up to 15.6 times more likely to have an adverse work outcome than those with mild symptoms.
Based on the number of missed workdays in this cohort, the annual economic loss due to menopause across the US was estimated at 1.8 billion USD. Of note, this number does not include the economic loss due to decreased productivity and other adverse work outcomes. Moreover, the study mentioned an estimated potential excess in health care costs of 24.8 billion USD for women with menopause symptoms in the US every year.
These numbers emphasize the economic importance of addressing women’s health and underscore why we should #InvestInWomen to accelerate progress!
