Blueprint to Close the Women%E2%80%99s Health Gap 2025

Monumental investment in women, their health and their healthcare is needed to close the women’s health gap. Earlier in this report, actions that policy-makers, health and social systems, life sciences and investors can take to close the women’s health gap were highlighted. Additionally, given that most of the time women spend in poor health occurs during their working years, employers can play a meaningful role in advancing women’s health. And employers benefit when they invest in women. For example, investing in menstrual health in the workplace has been shown to reduce absenteeism by 62% and to reduce workforce turnover by 23%.183 Employers can create a culture of flexibility and caring in which the health of women is valued and emphasized. Employers often control an employee’s physical working environment and can design workplaces to support women and their health. This could include private lactation rooms for nursing mothers, electric fans for women in menopause, having safe places to change menstrual pads, or making sure that sites requiring personal protective equipment have sizes for women. Employees are increasingly demanding and valuing more flexibility in their benefits, spanning from increased family-forming support to access to sex- and gender-specific care. Women who are at leadership tables may be better able to help drive strategic investments and actions to close the women’s health gap. As the Forum’s Global Gender Gap 2024 and McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2024, in partnership with Leanin.org, reports have noted, women struggle in the career path from entry level roles to C-suite positions. The Forum notes that while women occupy around half of entry-level positions, they represent a quarter of C-suite roles.184,185 Research is needed to understand the correlation between conditions driving the women’s health gap and the “broken rung” of the leadership ladder. Fixing the ladder is important to the health and work life of women and to the organizations for which they work: firms with women in senior positions are more profitable and socially responsible, according to the Harvard Business Review.186 McKinsey research also found that new businesses led by a woman or member of an under-represented group in 2023 were more likely to succeed.187 Women Count 2022 also found that companies in the United Kingdom whose executive committee membership was at least 50% women had the highest profit margin, and companies with between 25% and 49% women on their executive committees had the second-highest profit margin.188 Business leaders and investors may also consider how the next generation is learning – or not – about women’s health conditions. Weaving in elements of health literacy – whether it’s explaining how heart attack symptoms can look different or explaining what a cervix is – to boys and girls at an earlier age can be empowering for all students. Recent studies on menstruation have found that involving boys in menstrual education, for example, can help decrease teasing or embarrassment in schools and help them act as advocates for girls.189,190 Achieving the economic benefits of closing the women’s health gap requires coordinated, collaborative and transformative investment between public, private and social sectors.3.5 Invest in women: Investors, businesses, governments, philanthropies and universities have a key role to play Blueprint to Close the Women’s Health Gap: How to Improve Lives and Economies for All 32