The Other Half of Medicine That Overlooked Women
As a woman, you grow up believing that modern medicine is neutral, equitable, and designed to protect everyone in society. Yet, the deeper you explore the history of medicine, the clearer it becomes that medicine was never truly designed with women in mind.
For decades, society has assumed that medical advancement automatically meant progress for everyone. We were led to believe that scientific breakthroughs were carefully tested, refined, and then applied equally to all people based on their symptoms and needs. In reality, much of modern medicine has been built on research conducted primarily on men, while women’s bodies were often considered too complicated, inconvenient, or simply an afterthought.
Historically, women were frequently excluded from clinical trials. Researchers cited hormonal fluctuations, the possibility of pregnancy, and concerns about variability as reasons for their exclusion. In truth, removing women from research often made studies simpler to conduct and easier to analyse. The consequence of this approach is profound: many medications currently prescribed around the world were designed, tested, and approved without fully understanding how they affect women’s bodies.
Even something as simple as a pain reliever or a fever medication can behave differently in a woman’s body due to variations in metabolism, body composition, and hormonal influences. Yet, dosage recommendations and treatment protocols have often been based on male physiology. It is therefore not surprising that women are nearly twice as likely as men to experience adverse drug reactions.
This imbalance is not confined to one country; it reflects a global issue embedded within healthcare systems.
In India, maternal mortality rates have declined significantly over the past two decades, from 362 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 to around 80 per 100,000 in recent years. While this represents substantial progress, approximately 19,000 women still die each year in India from maternal causes. That equates to nearly 52 women losing their lives every day due to complications related to pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period.
The situation is even more difficult in sub-Saharan Africa, where maternal mortality remains devastatingly high. Nearly 70% of global maternal deaths occur in this region, with an estimated 182,000 women dying annually from preventable pregnancy-related complications. Globally, around 260,000 women died in 2023 due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and an overwhelming 94% of these deaths occurred in low-resource countries.
Even in high-income nations, the problem persists. In the United Kingdom, 252 women died either during pregnancy or within six weeks after the end of pregnancy between 2022 and 2024. This corresponds to a maternal mortality rate of 12.8 deaths per 100,000 maternities, a figure that is higher than it was a decade ago.
Part of the challenge lies in the continued exclusion of pregnant women from clinical trials. When new diseases emerge from the Zika virus outbreak to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there is often limited high-quality evidence on how best to treat pregnant women safely and effectively. As a result, clinicians are forced to make critical treatment decisions with incomplete information.
Encouragingly, the conversation around gender bias in medicine is beginning to change. Increasingly, researchers, clinicians, and policymakers are advocating for the inclusion of women, including pregnant women, in clinical research. Countries are also improving the accuracy of maternal mortality reporting, allowing for better recognition of the scale of the problem.
Yet progress remains slow. Every day, hundreds of women around the world continue to die from causes that modern medicine already knows how to prevent.
Medicine was always meant to serve humanity as a whole. It was intended to be a force for healing, protection, and progress for everyone, not just a select few. Until medicine truly listens to women’s bodies, respects women’s biology, and represents women’s lived realities in research and clinical practice, it will remain incomplete.
Until then, medicine will remain only half the medicine it claims to be.
