by Jocalyn Clark, International Editor, BMJ
BMJ 2025; 390 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r1605 (Published 31 July 2025).
This year is unleashing a series of devastating blows to women’s health worldwide. Cuts to foreign aid. Denial of abortion access and reproductive autonomy (doi:10.1136/bmj.r459). Targeted attacks on hospitals, including maternity clinics, in conflict areas (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1242). Waning support for a UK women’s health strategy (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1600). All are consequences of regressive government decisions—decisions designed to be stealth but destined to be harmful. For all the talk about the importance of women’s wellbeing, their health and rights hold the least currency in the present political markets of power and influence.
Women’s exploitation is particularly acute in health. Women sustain communities and health systems, often unpaid, and bear the heaviest burdens during crises. Even in female dominated professions—such as nursing, which is critical to domestic and global health goals (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1480) —women’s work is diminished by gender pay gaps favouring men. Worse, women are vastly under-represented in decision making on health priorities and investments.
Exclusion is damaging. As highlighted in new commentaries in The BMJ, women comprise just a third of researchers worldwide (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1556) and make up a mere 16% of patent holders in the US (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1489) —skewing what research questions are asked, whose experiences are valued, and which health interventions and innovations are prioritised. This leads to bias: only 8.8% of research funded by the US National Institutes of Health, and less than 2% of all venture capital health investments are focused exclusively on women (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1537), who comprise more than half the population. This inequity fuels the persistent women’s health gap, where globally women spend 25% more time in poor health than men owing to conditions that affect them uniquely or disproportionately.
Promise of innovation
A growing field of women’s health innovation seems determined to upend all of that. Using investment cases and economic arguments, proponents such as the World Economic Forum’s global alliance say that closing the women’s health gap would boost the global economy by $1tn (£755bn; €874bn) a year. Investments in inclusive clinical trials, sex-and-gender disaggregated data, and development of diagnostics and treatments for overlooked conditions across women’s lifespans could yield a threefold financial return. Market incentives, patient involvement, and stronger regulation are needed to drive biotech involvement and investments (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1403).
At the heart of this innovation agenda is a shift in power. Fara Ndiaye writes that women are not mere recipients or deliverers of health innovations but must be architects of the solutions (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1556). When women define health innovations, care becomes more effective, equitable, and transformative.
Calls for change in women’s health are not new. But the new growing coalitions of private companies, community organisations, funders, and femtech founders bring energy, resources, and global scope. Their ambition may succeed where public institutions alone have fallen short. As Ru Cheng argues (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1537), building inclusive networks such as the Innovation Equity Forum, supported by the Gates Foundation, is essential to maintain momentum, especially as public budgets shrink. With backing from philanthropy and business, this innovation wave could be the turning point women’s health desperately needs.
But innovation can’t be merely technological. As Karla Unger Saldaña and colleagues urge (doi:10.1136/bmj.r1556), efforts in this space also need to advance sociocultural, health system, and policy innovations. Tech fixes alone won’t solve deeply rooted inequalities. For instance, low cost cervical cancer screening is available, yet far fewer disadvantaged women are screened. The barrier isn’t tech—it’s political will. In such contexts, patriarchal systems must be challenged and women’s rights actively upheld.
Women’s health is political
The growing movement around women’s health innovation is to be welcomed. But to be genuinely transformative, it must be political. Women’s health is not only underfunded and under-researched—it lacks the political priority and urgency that only political solidarity and action can hasten. Global coalitions and partnerships must recognise that success will depend on their ability to organise and advance political priority. And innovation coalitions themselves must be equitable and inclusive of the leadership of under-represented women, particularly from the global south.
With support from the Gates Foundation, The BMJ is independently developing a collection of analyses examining the gaps, challenges, opportunities, and requirements for equitable women’s health innovation worldwide, which we aim to publish later in the year. We will close out 2025 in defiance of how it has begun: by championing the notion that women in all their diversities are not passive to political tides but are powerful agents of change. Their leadership will strengthen women’s health, innovation, and rights—and the entire global health ecosystem.