Only 2.4% of UK research goes to women's health?! Started a Parliament petition to change this

[ThoughtfulSunflower]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to post here because I know so many women on MN have experienced the absolute nightmare of endless GP appointments, being brushed off, or waiting years for a basic diagnosis for things like endometriosis, adenomyosis, or severe menopause symptoms.

I recently came across a statistic from the charity Wellbeing of Women that honestly blew my mind: despite women making up over half the UK population, only 2.4% of all public health research funding in the UK is allocated to gynaecological health and childbirth.

It explains so much about why primary care feels so under-resourced when it comes to female health. Our GPs simply aren't given the mandatory training or clinical backing they need, and the funding just isn't there.

I decided I couldn't just sit on my hands, so I’ve launched an official UK Parliament petition calling on the government to restructure NHS funding and GP training specifically for women's healthcare.
We're currently pushing to build national momentum so we can force a proper debate in the House of Commons.

If you have 30 seconds to spare, I’d be so grateful if you could sign and share it. Every single signature counts toward getting this on Parliament's agenda:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/771233#progress

Would also love to hear people's thoughts—has anyone else struggled with the battle for a diagnosis in primary care?

Thanks so much for reading! x

You need some extra sources to back up that claim. How is that 2.4% calculated? I’d sign if I was sure that that is correct.

https://www.uk-cpi.com/blog/the-gender-gap-persists-in-health-research-heres-what-we-can-do-to-close-it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx254l4qg83o

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/nihr20/gamechangers/womens-health

Yes women are historically underfunded, particularly when you consider we need maternity services as well and therefore should arguably get a larger proportion of healthcare budget. As 51% of the population it is no surprise we live with worse health and quality of life than men.

But what percentage is focused on purely 'mens health'?

Most healthcare surely is sex irrelevant.

If it's 2.4% of EVERYTHING though it might not even be that low, when you consider how many diseases affect both sexes e.g. cancers, allergies, autoimmune and so on. I agree women's healthcare is under researched and it is frustrating especially when you consider how little is understood about gynae conditions but remember that gynaecology is one of the very many ologies.

Everything is based on male health because they only use men in studies, even only male mice! Arguably the only reason we have relatively high funding for breast cancer research is because men have realised they can get it too.

We know health isn't the same across the sexes (even if you only noticed that Covid interacted with men and women differently, you must be able to understand that) and different diseases have impacts for women than for men. Drugs use on women are more likely to harm them than the illnesses they are meant to treat in many cases, largely because they weren't tested on women before being rolled out. Of course this is an issue and hasn't been tackled. Factor in all of the health issues women get that haven't been researched (endo being the latest one in the news) and maternity which is possibly one of the most underfunded and researched areas of healthcare...

Women’s health is more than gynae.

I have endometriosis which yes is gynae but it is way more than heavy periods and painful periods. It is a full body disease that affects women every day of the month and there is no cure for it. Even getting a hysterectomy won’t cure it! PCOS is similar. And what about PMS/PMDD and menopause that also go far far beyond our uteruses and affect so many women?

Then there’s the fact that women were excluded from medical studies until the 1990s. Women are not just small men, we need proper gender specific research.