January 17, 2024 – The McKinsey Health Institute in collaboration with the World Economic Forum Centre for Health and Healthcare today in Davos released groundbreaking new research sizing the health and economic potential of investing in women’s health.
Women, on average, spend 25 percent more time in poor health than men. Closing the Women’s Health Gap: A $1 Trillion Opportunity to Improve Lives and Economies explores the root causes driving this discrepancy and outlines the actions needed to address the shortcomings that limit the ability of many women to live to their full potential.
Closing the gender health gap could reduce the time women spend in poor health by almost two-thirds and add up to $1 trillion to the economy annually by 2040, the report says. It could also lead to an additional seven healthy days for every woman each year, or more than 500 days over a woman’s lifetime. For every $1 invested in women’s health, about $3 is projected in economic growth, generating the equivalent impact of 137 million women accessing full-time positions by 2040, the research finds.
Unlocking this potential is possible with concrete steps such as investing in women-centric research to fill knowledge and data gaps; collecting and analyzing sex, ethnicity, and gender-specific data; enhancing access to gender-specific care; incentivizing new financing models; and establishing business policies that support women’s health.
“This research has paved the way for the launch of the World Economic Forum’s Global Alliance for Women’s Health, a coalition of leading global institutions committed to enabling healthier lives for the 3.9 billion women worldwide,” said Shyam Bishen, Head, Centre for Health and Healthcare with the World Economic Forum. “The Alliance is comprised of stakeholders across the public, private, philanthropic, entertainment, and non-profit sectors, and will catalyze the actions — and investment — needed to realize healthier futures for women and their communities.”
“To improve health equity and foster economic growth, stakeholders across sectors and industries must develop a cooperative and comprehensive strategy to address women’s health,” said Lucy Pérez, report co-author, Coleader of the McKinsey Health Institute’s health equity portfolio and Senior Partner with McKinsey & Company. “There is a tremendous opportunity to support the health of women, and a clear business case for making these investments.”
“Women have been treated by the scientific and medical communities as though they are small men, when our entire biology is different,” said Anouk Petersen, report co-author, Health Equity Coleader of the McKinsey Health Institute, and Partner with McKinsey & Company. “Women’s health is often simplified to include only sexual and reproductive health, which meaningfully underrepresents women’s health burden. We must evolve our understanding of women’s health to look at the whole person in a much more specific way if we are going to close this gap.”
“The good news is that we can address this gap,” said Valentina Sartori, report co-author, Affiliated Leader of the McKinsey Health Institute, and Partner with McKinsey & Company. “Now that we have sized the opportunity, of addressing the women’s health gap, we can unleash the investment needed for stronger sex-based care delivery and R&D, and continue to generate the data that expands our knowledge and helps close the gap.”
“We know where the inequities are, and we need to address them,” said Pooja Kumar, report co-author, Global Leader of the McKinsey Health Institute, and Senior Partner with McKinsey & Company. “Fifty-six percent of the women’s health burden is due to health conditions that are more prevalent or manifest differently in women. This is a clear signal about the need for more investment in understanding and addressing women’s health.”
“Narrowing the gap would lead to fewer early deaths, fewer health conditions per woman, extended economic and societal capacity to contribute, and increased productivity,” said Kweilin Ellingrud, co-author and director of the McKinsey Global Institute. “Of these outcomes, the largest economic impact comes from women experiencing fewer health conditions, enabling them to avoid 24 million life years lost to disability and boosting economic productivity by up to $400 billion.”
You can find the full report at www.mckinsey.com/womenshealthgap.
You can learn more about the Global Alliance for Women’s Health here.
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About the McKinsey Health Institute
The McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) is an enduring, non-profit-generating entity within McKinsey & Company. MHI believes, over the next decade, humanity could add as much as 45 billion extra years of higher-quality life, which is roughly six years per person on average — and substantially more in some countries and populations. MHI’s mission is to catalyze the actions needed across continents, sectors, and communities to realize this possibility.