Our Health is Not Heard

By Niya Bobban

When women are already vulnerable to experiencing gender bias in their everyday lives, it's hard to believe that our health industry is a participant in the continuous prejudice we once thought would diminish from the years of overcoming the never-ending battle of inequality. 

The health field within women's research on treatment and diagnosis has often been overlooked, and most believe it's due to the current discrimination and little education we have diffused in the field. Even today, most textbooks, medications, and treatments have generally only fulfilled men's needs and risks. This can go with any form of primary mental or physical illness/disorder that affects both genders in different ways. A 2000 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that women are seven times more likely than men to be misdiagnosed and discharged in the middle of having medical emergencies like heart attacks. The statistics later revealed that the reason why we are so negligent of women's needs is because there is so little understanding of them in medical concepts. What we don't realize is women and men have different symptoms for illnesses; if our medical concepts are based mainly on male physiology, women might be treated in a way that is abnormal for their bodies.

The World Economic Forum stated that the women's health gap equates to 75 million years of life lost due to poor health or early death each year. Almost half the population consists of females, and yet we still have such little information on women's medical research, which causes late diagnoses. Why? Historical bias had been a massive factor in the lack of women's health research: Before the 21st century, women's health concerns were a low priority for medical research, deeming them unnecessary in clinical trials. Even the FDA had suggested policies that would exclude women from drug clinical trials due to their menses (times of menstruation), according to the National Institute of Health. Excluding women in clinical trials has led to a shortage of evidence on how specific catalysts and drugs affect women. Without the basic knowledge of women's symptoms toward medications and trials back then, it would have been much more challenging to gain an understanding of female health. 

Doctors and medical researchers have failed to notice the growing concerns about women's health; unlike the 1950s, when researchers had purposefully excluded women in clinical trials, we are living in a modern era where we endorse inclusivity and equity. If we want to continue this trend, we should promote awareness on creating extensive research on the woman body and making federal regulations to fund women's medical education and research. Directing investments toward women's health from venture capital investors could potentially help create tools that could better help with female diagnosis. If we close the women's health gap, we could possibly boost the global economy: Data from the WEF Report on closing the gap points to a $1 trillion increase annually in the next 16 years. If we act now, the seemingly never-ending battle for women's medical research might come to an end.