Women, cancer, and the cost of not being heard
9 March 2026
When it comes to care and outcomes, why are women still at a disadvantage?
International Women’s Day is a moment to celebrate progress. Yet, it’s also an opportunity to re-examine our assumptions around women’s health, and focus on understanding the barriers women continue to encounter when it comes to healthcare.
Cancer provides the perfect lens for this: rates are rising faster in women and, for many types of cancer, there are documented sex-based differences in time to diagnosis, side-effects and overall outcomes.
Cancer is rising in women
Globally, new cases of cancer will grow by a staggering 77% between 2022 and 2050. And certain cancers are rising more in women – particularly breast, uterine, pancreatic, lung and kidney cancers. This is caused by multiple factors – an ageing population, obesity, but also exposure to ambient air pollution, including from solid cooking fuels and radon, which disproportionately affects women and increases their risk of lung cancer.
Struggling to be seen and heard
According to the women’s health strategy for England, 84% of women reported feeling that they were not listened to by healthcare professionals. These findings echo other studies across multiple conditions. Women’s concerns are less likely to be taken seriously than men’s and their health issues are often missed or dismissed – either because women are treated more casually or because of misconceptions about certain diseases not affecting them.
A lack of evidence contributes to low awareness of how conditions may manifest in women and how they may respond to treatment. This limits proactive investigation when women present with symptoms.
In cancer, this has measurable effects on wait times, pain management and the timeliness of investigations. Women often have to wait longer than men for their cancer to be diagnosed, and this trend is also seen in cardiovascular disease, ADHD and metabolic disorders such as diabetes. Some cancers (e.g. ovarian, pancreatic, lung, liver, kidney) are inherently harder to detect at an early stage, often requiring multiple consultations. For example, blood cancer symptoms – including tiredness, paleness and persistent infections – can be attributed to a range of conditions; almost one third of people have to visit their primary healthcare provider three or more times before receiving a diagnosis. For women, there is the added complication that some cancer symptoms mimic menopause symptoms, delaying diagnosis. Groups such as the American Cancer Society are trying to draw attention to this by publishing information to highlight key differences.
Why does this happen?
In many cases, gendered stereotypes continue to frame women’s symptoms as ‘emotional’ or ‘hormonal’, which undermines recognition of serious disease and delays referral. Entrenched knowledge gaps about sex‑specific symptom patterns also shape diagnostic practices.
These gaps have their roots in clinical research, because women have historically been under‑represented in clinical trials – and this pattern continues. This creates a cycle: a lack of evidence contributes to low awareness of how conditions may manifest in women and how women may respond to treatment; this limits proactive investigation when women present with symptoms. Research gaps may explain why women with cancer are 34% more likely than men to experience severe side effects from treatment.
Gendered stereotypes continue to frame women’s symptoms as ‘emotional’ or ‘hormonal’, which undermines recognition of serious disease and delays referral.
The consequences of dismissal and delays
Diagnostic and treatment delays erode trust and make women less likely to seek help. Repeated dismissal (medical gaslighting) and false reassurance given by clinicians can make women less likely to visit a doctor until a disease is advanced. The European Cancer Organisation’s ‘12 million reasons’ report highlights the increased likelihood of women diagnosed with cancer facing gender disparities in screening and care, and the multifaceted reasons behind this.
This has a detrimental impact on women’s chances of survival – and on society as a whole. Women still do more than half of the world’s unpaid work, so their poor health bears a huge cost. One study suggested that investing in women’s health could boost the global economy by $1 trillion annually by 2040.
How to drive change
Some concrete steps can be taken to improve women’s health outcomes:
- Continued efforts should be made to ensure appropriate representation of women in clinical trials.
- Listening must be treated as a core clinical skill, and sex-specific misconceptions incorporated into medical training.
- Appropriate prompts should be built into care pathways to reflect the growing understanding of epidemiological patterns for different cancers so that persistent or worsening symptoms trigger investigation.
- Data should be disagreggated by sex and age – including time to assessment, investigations offered, stage at diagnosis, and adherence to faster diagnosis standards – to make inequities visible and actionable.
- Equitable access to diagnostics in primary care – particularly for symptoms common in women’s cancers – should be expanded to shorten the time from first presentation to referral.
Reframing the question
These trends are not new. Many of the health disparities women experience have been going on for decades. The need for change is not just clinical; it’s a matter of health equity and women’s rights. For too long, we have been asking, ‘Why didn’t these women speak up sooner?’ when what we should have been asking is, ‘Why didn’t we listen to them sooner?’
And that should happen every day, not just on International Women’s Day.