Women’s healthcare in the UK is facing a deepening crisis. Despite women making up 51% of the population, the system designed to care for them is chronically underfunded, structurally biased and failing to deliver equitable treatment. The scale of this crisis is now so severe that leading women’s organisations warn of a national emergency – yet women’s health inequalities remain largely unrecognised in law, including within the Equality Act 2010.
This article assesses the current state of women’s healthcare in the UK, drawing on recent policy briefings, government data and sector reports to examine the roots of the crisis, its economic and social consequences and the reforms proposed to address it.
Rising Demand, Falling Investment
Over the past decade, women’s health services have experience significant underinvestment. According to the Women’s Budget Group, since 2020, waiting times for gynaecology have gone up by 109%, while investment in Sexual and Reproductive Health Services have decreased by 40% in the last decade. These pressures have been exacerbated with wider NHS backlogs, creating unprecedented delays for women seeking diagnosis and treatment.
As of January 2026, 565,00 women were on gynaecology waiting lists, with average waits of 15 weeks. This has been a drastic increase since the 6.4-week average in 2018. Consequently, this places gynaecology among the top five fastest-growing elective backlogs in the NHS.
Conditions like endometriosis illustrate the scale of the crisis. The average time from first reporting symptoms to receiving a diagnosis is now over 9 years, with recent survey data placing it at 9 years and 4 month in England. As reported by Endometriosis UK, delayed diagnosis may result in disease progression and harm to patient.
These delays are not simply clinical failures – they are structural failures of funding, prioritisation and political will.
Gendered Health Inequalities
Despite living longer than men, women spend a greater proportion of their lives in ill health or disability. The UK has also fallen sharply in international rankings: between 2000 and 2022, the UK dropped from 20th to 26th out of 38 OECD countries for female life expectancy.
The renewed Women’s Health Strategy highlights women in England spend more of their lives in poor health than men, and only the wealthiest third can expect to remain in good health until retirement. This reflects deep socioeconomic inequalities, where gender and ethnicity intersect to shape health outcomes.
The government’s own survey found that 84% of women reported instances where they or someone they cared for felt ignored by a healthcare professional. As Wes Streeting stated in April 2026, some women have been made to feel like “second-class citizens, with their pain treated as an inconvenience and their symptoms as an overreaction”.
This culture of dismissal, often referred to as medical misogyny, contributes directly to delayed diagnosis, inadequate pain management and poorer outcomes.
Economic Consequences of Neglect
The gender health gap is not only a social injustice, but it is also an economic liability.
Research from Endometriosis UK highlights that menstrual health conditions cost the UK economy £11 billion per year in absenteeism. Untreated menopause symptoms drive £1.5 billion in annual losses due to workforce dropout, with more than 60,000 women out of work because they cannot access adequate support.
Underfunding of women’s health actively undermines productivity, increases welfare dependency and reduces labour market participation – demonstrated by these figures.
Yet, only 2% of UK medical research funding is spent on pregnancy, childbirth, and female reproductive health – despite one in three women experiencing a reproductive or gynaecological issue. This mismatch between need and investment is one of the clearest indicators of systemic gender bias.
Renewed Women’s Health Strategy
The renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England (2026) sets out several commitments aimed at addressing these inequalities. These include:
- Establishing a Women’s Voices Partnership in 2027 to embed women’s perspectives in national and regional decision-making.
- Co-producing new standards of care for gynaecological procedures within three years, ensuring informed consent and access to pain relief.
- Investing £1 million in menstrual health education for girls in schools and community settings.
- Funding regional specialist centres for group-based women’s health pathways, prioritising areas with the highest health inequalities.
- Launching new virtual pathways for menstrual problems and menopause through NHS Online in 2027.
These reforms are ambitious, but they require sustained funding and political commitment. Without structural change, including legal recognition of women’s health inequalities, progress risks being slow or uneven.
The Equality Act Gap
Although sex is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, the Act does not explicitly recognise women’s health inequalities or require public bodies to address them. This legal gap allows systemic disparities to persist without accountability.
Given the scale of the crisis, many policy experts argue that women’s health should be formally recognised within equality legislation to ensure consistent funding, monitoring, and enforcement.
Embedding women’s health within the UK’s equality framework would be a transformative step toward addressing structural gender bias.
Conclusion
The UK’s women’s healthcare system is in crisis. Underfunding, long waits, medical misogyny, and structural inequalities have created a system that fails millions of women – with profound social and economic consequences.
The renewed Women’s Health Strategy offers a pathway forward, but meaningful change will require political leadership, legal reform, and sustained investment. For young politicians, activists, and policymakers, women’s health is not a niche issue. It is a national priority that affects families, communities, and the economy.
References
Department of Health and Social Care (2026). The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England. [online] https://www.gov.uk/official-documents. Department of Health and Social Care. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69df6690a68b527bd9408e9a/renewed-womens-health-strategy-for-england.pdf
Endometriosis UK (2026). The state of endometriosis care in the UK: A roadmap for driving down diagnosis times and improving access to care. [online] Available at: https://www.endometriosis-uk.org/sites/default/files/2026-02/Endometriosis%20-%20The%20State%20of%20Endometriosis%20Care%20Report.pdf
Henderson, N. and Hodgson, S. (2026). Five unanswered questions from the UK’s renewed women’s health strategy. [online] OHE . Available at: https://www.ohe.org/insights/five-unanswered-questions-from-the-uks-renewed-womens-health-strategy/
King, L. (2025). Addressing the Women’s Health Gap in the NHS. Pure Unity Health. Available at: https://pureunityhealth.co.uk/resources/blog/addressing-the-womens-health-gap-in-the-nhs/
Pym, H. and Burns, C. (2026). Women’s health strategy: ‘I still don’t feel listened to’. BBC News. [online] 15 Apr. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2kke1jn8xo
UK Women’s Budget Group (2026). Health inequalities and gender briefing 2026. [online] Wbg.org.uk. Available at: https://www.wbg.org.uk/publication/health-inequalities-and-gender-briefing-2026/