Throughout this article, the term “women’s healthcare” is used because it reflects how services, funding and policies exist within Canada. This language is imperfect and limited. Much of what is called “women’s health” also impacts trans and non-binary people, and other gender-diverse individuals, who often face additional barriers within medical settings.
Canadian women can attest to their experiences within the context of our healthcare system’s “gender gap”, i.e. the profound disparity between how women are treated by medical professionals and how men are cared for in contrast. And the statistics don’t lie; according to Women’s Health Collective Canada, 70% of patients with medically unexplained systems are women.
These disparities show up in different ways, including access, quality of care, and outcomes. Caregiver burnout, income equality, and experiences like being dismissed or disbelieved are among the challenges faced by women when it comes to seeking support for their physical and mental wellbeing.
Healthcare systems were not built with women in mind. Medical research, including drug trials, has historically been conducted with male subjects, leaving women’s unique needs unaddressed. For example, heart attack symptoms show up differently for men and women, and we also metabolize drugs in different ways. The exclusion of women from clinical trials has had grave consequences: women are dismissed, misdiagnosed, or they avoid going to the doctor altogether.
Long-standing stereotypes both within and outside medical education, as well as policy decisions (like how only 7% of health research funding goes to women’s healthcare) contribute to a situation where, overall, women are in poorer health than men.
“This is not a story of what women lack. It is a story of what they deserve.” – IWK Report on Women’s Healthcare, 2025
In June of last year, the IWK women and children’s hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia asked Maritime women to share their health experiences through an online survey, and received responses from over 27,000 women in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. The responses and subsequent report made it clear that change within women’s healthcare is enthusiastically wanted and desperately needed, and that many women feel alienated and misunderstood by the systems meant to care for them. The survey adopted an approach inclusive of people assigned female at birth as well as gender-diverse individuals undergoing estrogen-based hormone therapy.
As president and CEO of the IWK Foundation Jennifer Gillivan says, their report reflects the challenges faced by women globally, but the contributing Maritime voices offer “a powerful, place-based lens on how those experiences unfold here, shaped by our geography, healthcare systems and social context.”
What emerges, Gillivan says, is the “picture of a woman who feels stressed and anxious, who carries the burden of care for those around her and who has self-censored her own health concerns due to a pattern of dismissal and bias.”
It’s clear from the IWK report that changes are needed not only medically, but on a structural, societal and systemic level. The statistics in the report are sobering:
- 21% of women who completed the survey say they are in real crisis, seeking medical support but finding a lack of communication and solid care
- Over 75% of women in the report have delayed or avoided seeking care because of other responsibilities, or worrying about being heard, acknowledged, and understood by their doctors
- 86% agreed that significant changes are needed in women’s healthcare
The top priority issues raised by women who completed the IWK survey were menopause and hormonal health, stress, anxiety and depression, weight management, sleep disorders, heart disease, and cancer. Chronic (and often invisible) illnesses were compounded by the toll of caregiving on many participants. Essentially, the pressure to be the perfect mom, wife, friend, daughter and community member has a real impact on women’s health.
According to participants, women’s healthcare would be improved with more doctors, shorter wait times, dedicated women’s health clinics, stronger education for doctors on women’s health, and more research devoted to differing bodies, symptoms and experiences.
Because of initiatives like the IWK report on women’s healthcare, the tides are turning. Women are no longer accepting the status quo. In December of 2025, Senator Danièle Henkel introduced Bill S-243, an act to establish a national framework for women’s health in Canada, which (as laid out by Women’s Health Collective Canada) would aim to:
- Strengthen investment in women’s health research
- Foster collaboration between public and private systems
- Enhance training and education for health-care professionals on women’s health
- Strengthen primary care and preventative health services for women of all ages
- Target solutions to improve care for women in rural and remote communities, as well as 2SLGBTQI+ people, Indigenous women, visible minority women, and women without consisted primary care.
Women have become the experts when it comes to their own bodies, because they haven’t had any choice. But as we move forward, that burden will hopefully be lifted off their shoulders. We can start this momentum by tangibly supporting and uplifting the voices eager to see and make a change.
“For millennia, medicine has functioned on the assumption that male bodies can represent humanity as a whole. As a result, we have a huge historical data gap when it comes to female bodies, and this is a data gap that is continuing to grow as researchers carry on ignoring the pressing ethical need to include female cells, animals, and humans in their research. Women are dying, and the medical world is complicit. It needs to wake up […] We need a revolution in the research and the practice of medicine, and we need it yesterday. We need to train doctors to listen to women, and to recognize that their inability to diagnose a woman may not be because she is lying or being hysterical: the problem may be the gender data gaps in their knowledge. It’s time to stop dismissing women, and start saving them.”
– Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men