IN A NUTSHELL Authors' NoteRenewed policy action that places women’s health at the focal point of the agenda is essential if the international economic targets are to be met. Especially because closing the women’s health gap will potentially yield economic gains that will have a world changing impact and transform lives. Effective governance for women’s health must include: national task forces that are truly representative and dedicated to addressing women’s health system gaps. Annual reporting mechanisms linking women’s health outcomes to budget cycles, regulatory reforms that accelerate the approval and integration of women-focused technologies while meeting clinical safety standards, mandatory diagnostic referral standards that ensure timely investigation after repeated presentations and cross-sector coordination between officials in the health, finance, labour, and digital ministries. Political commitment must be converted into measurable policy action. Without these reforms in governance structures, women’s health remains dependent on individual initiatives rather than the systemic change necessary to drive economic growth
Program Assistant
Women’s Health Innovation Policy Associate
The Dove Foundation for Global Change
Closing the Gender Gap in Women’s Health and Labour Force Participation
G20 Call To Action
No country can achieve sustained economic growth, human capital expansion, or long-term stability when half its population experiences disproportionately high rates of preventable ill health. Despite this, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death among women, responsible for approximately 33% of female deaths globally. Even with this significant burden, it continues to be underdiagnosed and undertreated, as women’s symptom profiles can vary from those traditionally emphasised in medical education and clinical guidelines. Maternal mortality remains one of the clearest indicators of inequality in women’s health. Every day, 700 women die from pregnancy-related causes, while 16 babies die every two minutes. Breast and cervical cancer outcomes are still major areas of health inequity as they depend largely on geography and income and screening access is inconsistent.
Unfortunately, these patterns are not isolated anomalies, they reflect systematic flaws in research priorities and clinical standards across health systems globally. These harmful attitudes recur at many points: reproductive health conditions are frequently normalised or dismissed, autoimmune disorders are often misattributed and minimised to solely psychological causes, chronic pain conditions are often deprioritised in clinical assessment and do not incur thorough investigation or referral. The issue is not limited to individual clinician behaviour, it is evidence of the effects of bias and inequity in how women’s health needs are conceptualised, studied, and addressed.
Women worldwide routinely encounter delays in diagnosis, fragmented care, and health systems insufficiently designed around their biological, social, and economic needs. We aim to draw attention to the fact that the consequence of these failures results in women spending extended periods of their lives living with undiagnosed, untreated, or inadequately managed conditions. This is certainly the case in conditions such as as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto’s disease, and thyroid disorders. In many of these cases women’s symptoms are deprioritised until the condition becomes chronic. This manifests in reduced workforce participation, diminished productivity, increased health and social care costs, and broader constraints on national economic performance.
It is profoundly evident that women’s health is not just a sectoral or socio-political issue, it is one of the most powerful macroeconomic levers available to governments today. The paradox of women’s life expectancy vs years spent in good health is an issue that The Dove Foundation of Global Change (DFGC) is calling the G20 parliamentarians and policy makers to invest efforts and resources into solving. The pledges of the past have sparked various action and initiatives aimed at addressing these issues, however the economic burden persists. The Brisbane Goal outlined in 2014 had a clear aim: “Reduce the gender gap in labour force participation by 25% by 2025” from which the phrase ‘25 by 25’ emerged. However, the G20 cannot uphold such commitments as women’s health problems still prevent millions from maximising their productivity and workforce participation. As 2025 has ended, the failure of the G20 to secure significant progress in obtaining the Brisbane Goal warrants a thorough reexamination of the attitudes and actions required to attain the economic benchmarks envisioned. Renewed policy action that places women’s health at the focal point of the agenda is essential if the international economic targets are to be met. Especially because closing the women’s health gap will potentially yield economic gains that will have a world changing impact and transform lives.
Amongst the G20 nations sits over 80% of global GDP and approximately ⅔ of the global population. The evidence strongly indicates that closing the women’s health gap could unlock $400 billion in global GDP annually by 2040 realized mainly within G20 economies. While some progress has been made with 9 of the G20 countries meeting the Brisbane goal, the 2040 $400 billion GDP gains annual target can only be actualised when all nations prioritise addressing the prevalent challenges within women’s healthcare. With 9 of the 20 nations engaging with the objectives of the Brisbane goal the workforce had a potential expansion of 100 million workers; this effect would only be multiplied by the cooperation of the remaining 11 nations. The cost of inaction is very high, data published by McKinsey demonstrates that:
- 3.9 billion women worldwide spend 25 % more of their lives in poor health than men
- 75 million disability‑adjusted life‑years lost through illness
- Billions is lost in potential GDP earnings annually in high income countries due to illnesses that disproportionately affect women
According to the Global Alliance for Women’s Health working groups “addressing health disparities could have a greater impact on mortality for conditions affecting life span than any single treatment studied in recent clinical trials.”
Lucy Pérez Senior Partner with McKinsey & Company states: “There is a tremendous opportunity to support the health of women, and a clear business case for making these investments.” The multiplier effect that national economies will experience for targeted investment into women’s health research is significant. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have identified the impact of investing in women’s healthcare on the advancement of socioeconomic development. Their new Global Investment Framework showed that increasing health expenditure by just $5 per person per year up to 2035 could yield up to 9 times that value in economic and social growth as improvement in maternal health will cause better childhood outcomes producing higher future earnings. These gains could also be achieved by an additional investment of $30 billion per year, equivalent to a 2% increase above current spending.
Not only is an investment in gender-specific research and treatment pathways for these underrepresented conditions necessary, there is also a need to review the leadership structures in these spaces. Women make up 76% of the unpaid care work force globally. The underrepresentation of women in health leadership roles, despite their dominance in the health workforce, creates persistent blind spots in policy, procurement, and regulatory frameworks. Addressing women’s health requires intentional governance reforms. The McKinsey Health Institute in collaboration with the World Economic Forum released a report that established 5 key pillars that create the blueprint foreclosing the gender health gap- an initiative they predict could be a ‘$1trillion dollar opportunity to improve lives and economies’:
- Count women- improve data collection methodologies
- Study women- conduct specific research on the drivers and effects of sex-based differences
- Care for women- adopt guidelines that align with the evidence for gender-specific care
- Include all women- retain an emphasis on health equity and inclusion
- Invest in women- dedicate resources to support women’s health R&D and leadership
Effective governance for women’s health must include: national task forces that are truly representative and dedicated to addressing women’s health system gaps. Annual reporting mechanisms linking women’s health outcomes to budget cycles, regulatory reforms that accelerate the approval and integration of women-focused technologies while meeting clinical safety standards, mandatory diagnostic referral standards that ensure timely investigation after repeated presentations and cross-sector coordination between officials in the health, finance, labour, and digital ministries. Political commitment must be converted into measurable policy action. Without these reforms in governance structures, women’s health remains dependent on individual initiatives rather than the systemic change necessary to drive economic growth.
The Dove Foundation for Global Change is making the following recommendations to the G20 nations:
- Establish a multi-sectoral G20 taskforce that convenes healthcare policymakers, health regulators, industry leaders, civil society, academic institutions, and research organizations to develop an urgent implementation plan for women’s health.
- At the national level, each G20 country must create an immediate women’s health taskforce comprising civil society, research institutions, the private sector, and relevant government bodies to accelerate action on women’s health challenges and gaps.
- Issue a call for R&D investment in new innovations addressing the full care pathway for women’s health conditions.
- Members of Parliament pledging to champion this initiative must publicly commit to prioritizing women’s health and backing diagnostic and treatment programmes for their constituents.
- Local hospitals and physicians must ensure that women presenting with identical health conditions across two separate visits receive immediate referral for further diagnostic testing.
The ramifications of the efforts of this campaign and the subsequent positive actions taken by the G20 nations to support the campaign will extend far beyond individual women. Investors, researchers, academics, non-profit organisations, life science institutions, and government bodies have vested interests in advancing women’s health. Healthier women are the bedrock of strong families, dynamic communities, thriving workplace environments, and durable economies. This signals promise within the commercial marketplace with the prospect for new products and services relating to the women’s healthcare ecosystem to emerge. Improving women’s health throughout their lives could drive at least $1 trillion in additional combined annual economic growth by 2040. Investing in women’s health is not simply a gender issue; it is a macro‑economic imperative that safeguards the prosperity of our societies as a whole.
References
https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/1726191/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44222-024-00253-7
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m1175.full.pdf