Women’s Health Outcomes

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, recent ONS figures show that there is a gap of more than 20 years in the healthy life expectancy of women between the least and most wealthy parts of the country. For men, the gap is around 15 years. In the most deprived parts of the country, women will only stay healthy to just over age 50, while for the best-off areas it is around age 70 or a little above. Women are also more prone to poverty, financial insecurity, interrupted and low-paid employment, and mental health problems, all of which obviously impact their health outcomes.

Covid-19 risks accelerating women’s health inequalities, for example due to delays in regular screening that are likely to increase the number of women with pelvic and breast cancers detected and diagnosed too late. Also, as the pandemic has placed so much more strain on women in their family roles as carers, whether combining home schooling with home working or caring for elderly loved ones, the added responsibility and loss of wider support that they had previously relied on will all take a toll on women’s health, in both the short and longer term.

I therefore congratulate my noble friend Lady Jenkin on her excellent timing on this debate, and her most brilliant introduction—what a tour de force. In fact, I have been concerned for a time about older women’s health deteriorating since 2010. Cuts to council budgets have led to reductions and delays in social care provision, as well as the removal of preventive measures in many areas such as meals on wheels, day centres and early-stage care support. This obviously poses a risk to the health of older women both directly, because there are more elderly women than men and they are not receiving the care they need, and indirectly because of the added burdens on family carers, who tend to be predominantly daughters and mothers. Social care reform is important for women’s health outcomes and I hope there is an increased recognition of this.

Finally, problems faced by older women in the workplace are troubling. In certain sectors they face more age discrimination at work than men, particularly women who have challenging health issues when they go through menopause. Even though menopause systems tend to affect women’s health only temporarily, the lack of understanding of the impacts too often lead women to either leave work or lose their jobs. There is insufficient appreciation that a change to performance and efficiency, whether due to a lack of sleep after night sweats or hot flushes and hormonal changes that undermine concentration, will not be permanent. Therefore, I hope my noble friend the Minister will address some of these issues of menopause at work that could allow women to return or stay in their jobs. Currently, they are too often leaving work.