The UK has the largest female health gap in the G20. A “female health gap” refers to women being in generally worse health over the course of their lives than men and occurs due to gender disparity across the healthcare system.
Clinical trials and diagnostics, for example, take the male body as the standard and have disregarded the fact that drugs and medical conditions can affect the female body differently. Studies have predominantly been carried out on male test subjects, including at animal and even cell testing stages.
Inevitably then, women are dangerously medicated and misdiagnosed. Exemplifying the first of these consequences is the heart attack “preventing” drug which was found to increase the risk of heart attacks at a certain stage of the menstrual cycle. Exemplifying the second is the discovery that women with a total blockage of the coronary artery are 59% more likely to be misdiagnosed than men....