Maithreyi Ravikumar
Lead, Women’s Health, KHPT

At a time when conversations on gender and health often struggle to move beyond rhetoric, the recent webinar “Bridging the Gap: Equity, Access, and Education in Women’s Health,” organized by the Delhi External Affairs Council and the Women’s Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, provided a much-needed space for honest reflection and dialogue. What made the conversation particularly meaningful was the range of different perspectives shared by women from industry, the medical profession, academia, and the development sector on what it truly means to centre women’s voices in health system design and delivery.

The discussion challenged the narrow definitions of women’s health, as reproductive and maternal care, which side-lines growing concerns such as non-communicable diseases – for example, non-smoker’s lung cancer among women. With the male body continuing to be the norm within medicine, women’s susceptibility to atypical conditions remains deprioritized.

The panel further highlighted the absence of women-centric design and gender-responsive budgeting within public health systems. With India spending less than 2% of GDP on health, women and transgender persons are more likely to get left out, unless targeted programming and gender budgeting is put into place.

The panel also reflected on the social and infrastructural barriers to health for women: for example, how gender norms that affect women’s health and participation also intersect with poor transport and inadequate local facilities, delaying care-seeking and care delivery for women. This is more so for transgender and non-binary communities, as the panel pointed out. Systemic discrimination, stigma and the absence of inclusive and gender-responsive clinical guidelines – be it for anaemia thresholds or breast cancer screening, for populations such as transgender people, underscore the urgent need to reimagine healthcare systems that can recognize and respond to gender diversity in all its forms.

With fewer and gender diverse women accessing health services, the panel also highlighted how this has a direct impact on the data we collect on women’s health conditions, through research and clinical practice, limiting professionals from adopting evidence-based interventions that truly respond to women’s needs.

A particularly powerful conversation revolved around the “feminization” of the lowest cadre of the health workforce, normalizing care work as women’s work, while women’s leadership and decision-making at the higher levels remain minimal. This imbalance critically influences how health priorities are set and implemented across the system.

But the picture was not entirely bleak, with the discussion circling back to clear priorities that must be set to address women’s health: (i) intersectional approaches to healthcare research and policy design; (ii) institutionalizing gender-responsive budgeting within health systems, and promoting women’s leadership at every level — from community structures to policy tables.

The webinar was a reminder that achieving equity in health is not only about addressing disparities, but about transforming systems to truly listen to and centre women’s voices.