Public health director Prof Matt Ashton has noticed something rather obvious: the world was largely designed by men, and women's health has suffered for it. A review of Liverpool's medical challenges two years ago revealed that residents of both genders had shorter lives than the national average, but a subsequent deep dive uncovered that women in the city spend about 30% of their lives in poor health and experience ill health around 10 years earlier than women nationally. "Well, clearly this is shocking," Ashton says, in what may be the understatement of the decade.
Hundreds of health and community leaders gathered at a major conference on Friday to discuss improvements after the report also found lung cancer mortality and respiratory deaths among the city's women were double the national average, and drug-related fatalities among women were more than three times higher than the England average. Debbie Nolan, head of health services for Citizens Advice Liverpool, notes that women's health is shaped as much by poverty, housing, caring responsibilities, and safety as by healthcare. Community organisations, she adds, fill "a vital role in supporting women where systems don't always meet their needs."
Toni Garrigos, 35, told the conference she had been waiting 15 months for a psychologist's appointment after being diagnosed with ADHD. She completed a prison term after selling drugs to make ends meet as a single mother of three children. "My offending behaviour was potentially linked to me having ADHD impulsivity and making decisions without thinking," she says, wondering if an earlier diagnosis might have kept her out of prison. Rahima Farah, the council's assistant cabinet member for health, adds that "too many still feel unheard or unsupported," citing barriers from language and cultural expectations to discrimination and unequal access to services.
Ashton concludes: "We need to be able to recognise and respond to particular needs of women more easily, properly and more consistently and we have to make access to advice and support easier and more joined up - overall this is about fairness." In April, the government shared an update of the Women's Health Strategy, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting vowing to "dismantle the culture and ingrained behaviours that allow medical misogyny to fester and grow." Plans include shortening waits for gynaecology care, reducing painful procedures without informed consent or pain relief choices, and providing easier access to contraception. Progress, it seems, requires acknowledging that women are, in fact, half the population.