On December 11, 2024, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Women’s Health Research. Jill Biden closed her remarks by saying, “My work doesn’t stop in January when Joe and I leave this house. I will keep building alliances, like the ones that brought us here today, and I will keep pushing for funding for innovative research.”

However, the Biden Administration is moving out of the White House next month – and the goals of the Trump Administration are, at best, unclear. Without that federal support, funding, and “innovative research”, women may have to advocate for improved healthcare themselves. Going into 2025, here are 25 facts about women’s health to educate and empower these women – and to help them understand how the gender health gap affects them, what biases they may encounter, and why they – and others – should prioritize their health in the first place.

At A Glance:

1. The gender health gap – or the inequality in accessing healthcare between men and women that leads to health disparities between the two – equates to 75 million years of life lost collectively per year due to poor health or early death.

2. Even when men and women experience the same disease, women are diagnosed, on average, four years later than men are across 770+ diseases – if they are even diagnosed correctly.

Cancer:

3. Lung cancer diagnoses have risen 84% among women – but have dropped 36% for men – over the past 40-plus years. And, while smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer, over 50% of women with lung cancer worldwide are non-smokers, compared to only 15-20% of men. Still, lung cancer screening guidelines capture only smoking history, leaving non-smoking women at risk for a late diagnosis and, subsequently, a low survival rate.

4. While lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women, breast cancer is one of the most common diagnosed cancers (accounting for about one in three new female cancers every year). Breast cancer is also one of the most expensive cancers to treat; a 2020 study estimated that it cost 14% of all cancer treatment costs or $29.8B.

5. 50% of women have dense breasts or extremely dense breast – and are four to six times more likely to get breast cancer than those with less dense breasts. But mammograms, the most common screening test for breast cancer, can miss about 50% of cancers in women with dense breasts.

Cardiovascular Disease:

6. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women, killing one in three.

7. However, women who complained of symptoms consistent with coronary heart disease – a type of cardiovascular disease – were twice as likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness than men who complained of identical symptoms.

Clinical Trials:

8. As of 2022, women were about 50.5% of the United States population – but compose 41.2% of all clinical trial participants.

9. For oncology specifically, 51% of cancer patients are female but just 41% of oncology clinical trial participants were female. Across all oncology clinical trial participants – male and female – Black and African-American made up 2-5% and those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity made up 3-6% as of 2022. In contrast, Black or African-American individuals made up 12.1% of the US population and 15% of the cancer population while Hispanic or Latino individuals were about 18.7% and 13% respectively.

10. Drug doses have been based on clinical trials, even though participants in those trials are mostly male and white. As a result, there is a drug dose gender gap for 86 different medications, including antidepressants, anti-seizure, cardiovascular health, and painkillers, all of which were approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).

Contraception:

11. More than 19 million women of reproductive age in the United States live in contraception deserts: where they lack reasonable access in their county to a health center that offers the full range of contraceptive methods.

12. Estimates for the economic impact of family planning have found that spending $3.6 billion a year on providing contraception to all who want them has an annual return potential of $432 billion – or a $120 dollar return for every $1 invested.

Endometriosis:

13. Endometriosis affects about 10% of girls and women of reproductive age worldwide, causing fatigue, heavy or irregular periods, debilitating pain, and infertility. In fact, 24- 50% of women with infertility have endometriosis.

14. And yet, endometriosis receives only $16 million (about 0.038% of the annual budget for health research) from the National Institute of Health (NIH). According to Evvy, a women’s health startup that published a book that covers the gender health gap and supports a women’s health non-profit, funding for companies focused on erectile dysfunction was 6x higher than that for companies studying endometriosis from 2019 to 2023.

Maternal Health:

15. More than 60% of maternal deaths are preventable.

16. Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women are.

Menstruation & Menopause:

17. A 2023 survey found 58% of women didn’t know what a normal menstrual cycle was, and 30% first learned about menstruation only when they started their period.

18. All menstruating women will experience menopause and will spent more than one-third of their lives in perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause collectively. But, as of 2023, only 31.3% of OB-GYN residents reported that their program even had a menopause curriculum.

19. In total, the United States is losing more than $26 billion annually “due to the failure to address the effect of menopause on working women”: $24.8 billion is due to direct medical expenditures and $1.8 billion is due to lost workdays.

The Healthcare Workforce:

20. Women make 80% of healthcare decisions for their household and are about 80% of all workers in healthcare occupations. (For comparison, about 50% of all employed workers – across all job sectors – are women.)

21. As of 2022, women with a male surgeon were 16% more likely to have complications, 20% more likely to need to stay in the hospital for longer, and 32% more likely to die than if their surgeon were female.

22. Hospitalized patients in the United States, regardless of gender, tended to have a lower chance of dying or being readmitted within 30 days when they were treated by female physicians rather than male physicians.

Women’s Health Funding:

23. 76% of women’s health companies have a female founder. However, in 2023, female founders – across all sectors, including healthcare – received only 1.8% of all VC funding. For Black female founders, that percentage is 0.48%.

24. The White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research was announced in November 2023. In less than a year, it galvanized nearly a billion dollars in funding for women’s health research. That funding includes $500 million from the U.S. Department of Defense, $200 million from the National Institutes of Health, and $110 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which was awarded in October 2024 to 23 teams out of 1,700 submissions across 45 states and Washington D.C and 34 countries.

25. Investing $350 million in women’s health is estimated to generate $14 billion to the United States economy.

At the White House Conference on Women’s Health Research, First Lady Jill Biden also said, “We’ve invested nearly $1 billion in this research on women’s health … and the women of this country are paying attention.” Going forward, women need to keep paying attention; there are obviously more than 25 facts across all health categories – not just the 10 listed here – that demonstrate the current gender health gap and its disproportionately adverse effects on women. Being aware of these health gap generally and these facts specifically, though, can help women continue to fight for accessible healthcare, advocate for themselves, and improve – or even, in some cases, save – their own lives.