Sittings · Document

REPORT (2025/2074(INI)) 2026-08-26

On gender inequalities in health, specifically as regards gender-specific conditions

Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality · Rapporteur: Billy Kelleher

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Parliament's resolution on gender inequalities in health, focusing on gender-specific conditions. It calls for sex- and gender-sensitive research, better diagnostics and treatment, action on endometriosis, menopause, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. It asks the Commission to set binding targets, fund women's health research and civil society, and develop a dedicated women's health strategy. It urges Member States to improve training, screening, maternity and menopause care, and to use EU funds for abortion access.

Committee position. The committee proposes a resolution calling for a holistic, rights-based approach to gender inequalities in health, with binding targets, gender-sensitive research and training, dedicated funding, and action on gender-specific conditions and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Key points

  1. States that gender inequalities in health are a violation of fundamental rights, rooted in decades of male-centred medical research, and affect physical, mental and social well-being.
  2. Calls on the Commission and Member States to remove barriers to healthcare, address geographical disparities and ensure affordable, high-quality, gender-sensitive care.
  3. Asks the Commission to set clear, public, measurable and binding targets with monitoring to address health inequalities, including for gender-specific conditions.
  4. Calls for mandatory sex- and gender-sensitive research design across the full research cycle, including pre-clinical and animal testing, and for mandatory sex- and gender-disaggregated data in EU-funded projects.
  5. Urges the EMA to consider sex- and gender-specific differences in evaluating generic medicines and to adopt guidelines for including under-represented groups in clinical trials.
  6. Calls for compulsory gender-sensitive training for medical professionals and for a European Reference Network on women's health.
  7. Urges the Commission to publish its recommendation on preventing harmful practices and to recognise obstetric and gynaecological violence as gender-based violence.
  8. Calls for ambitious screening targets for cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, and for gender-sensitive screening and vaccination programmes.
  9. Calls on the Council to recognise abortifacient and contraceptive medicines as medicines of common interest and to include them in the EU list of critical medicines.
  10. Calls for a gender-sensitive approach to cardiovascular care under the Safe Hearts Plan and for more research into sex and gender factors in cancer.
  11. Calls for universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, support for the 'My Voice, My Choice' initiative, and use of the European Social Fund Plus to fund safe and legal abortion services.
  12. Calls for a dedicated women's health strategy, ring-fenced EU funding for women's health research, and reinstatement of EU4Health funding for health civil society organisations.

Who is affected

  • Women and girls in the EU, who face gender-specific conditions, diagnostic delays and unequal access to care.
  • Transgender, non-binary, intersex and LGBTIQ+ people, who face exclusion from research and barriers to healthcare.
  • Women with disabilities, who face forced sterilisation, denial of sexual and reproductive health rights and additional barriers.
  • The Commission and Member States, which are asked to adopt targets, guidelines, training and funding measures.
  • Healthcare professionals and medical institutions, which are urged to adopt gender-sensitive, non-discriminatory training and practice.

Figures and deadlines

  • In 2020, only 5 % of global research and development funding was allocated to women's health research.
  • Women experience adverse drug reactions 50 % to 75 % more often than men.
  • 72 % of studies on drug trials fail to report sex- and gender-disaggregated data.
  • The total annual loss of production due to migraines is estimated at EUR 111 billion in indirect costs in the EU.
  • Women make up 78 % of healthcare workers in the EU.
  • Endometriosis results in an estimated annual cost of sick leave of EUR 30 billion in the EU.
  • Menopause symptoms affect 85 % of women; by 2030, an estimated 1.2 billion women globally will be experiencing menopause.
  • Only 10 of the 145 983 EU-funded projects have focused specifically on endometriosis.

Legal basis: Articles 2 and 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union; Articles 8, 9, 151, 153, 157 and 168 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

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