Women’s Health

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and to hear so many brilliantly powerful speeches. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) for securing the debate. I am pleased to see the Minister and the shadow Minister, but I want to say in my speech why they should not be here. A Treasury Minister and their shadow should respond to this debate, because poor women’s health is costing this country billions of pounds.

We have all talked about the stats. It is not just about lady issues or even to do with ladies’ bodies—it is how women are thought about. A fifth of women report that they were called “dramatic” when they sought help for their mental health, and 27% of those who spoke up were told that their issues could be hormonal. We understand that, but even when we are not awake we are losing this battle. A 2022 study of trauma patients found that women were half as likely as men to be given tranexamic acid, which reduces the risk of death from excessive bleeding by up to 30%—literally a life-and-death division.

Women have longer life expectancy, but we spend more of our lives in ill health. As we have said, even when we go to the doctor’s, we are not believed. It is also about provision. After all, abortion is healthcare, but it is not a given that anyone can access it in this country. Nor is it a given that anyone can access sexual health services, because they are not a requirement of general practice, even in 2025.

We do have to talk about lady parts and lady issues, but I want to make this more about wonga than wombs, because we are losing billions of pounds to our economy every single year by failing to support women’s health. Absenteeism due to severe period pain, heavy periods, endometriosis, fibroids and ovarian cysts is estimated to cost the UK economy nearly £11 billion per annum. Women have lost 14 million working days a year to the menopause. Painful periods cost an estimated £531 million in sick days. One in four women consider leaving their job due to their menopause experience; one in 10 do. If we changed that, it would generate £1.5 billion a year for the economy.

But this problem is not being talked about in terms of an economic loss. Two in five women said that their professional life has been negatively affected by the gender health gap, because they have missed out on important meetings, promotions or pay rises, but the same proportion said that they would never be able to mention it to a manager. That has to change.

We also have to recognise that experience is not equal. We know about the brilliant Five X More campaign on maternity services and the shocking experiences that women have. It is not just in maternity services where we see women from the global majority experiencing negativity. Women from those communities are twice as, and in some cases three times more, likely to experience long-term conditions that can negatively affect working, whether that is chronic pain, anxiety, hypertension, osteoarthritis, diabetes or morbid obesity.

Changing the record and making this an economic issue could change the lives of millions in this country—and help our GDP, which helps the lads as well. Every £1 of additional public investment in obstetrics and gynaecology services is estimated to deliver a return on investment of £11. In other words, every extra pound gets us 10 times more than that. The gender pensions gap currently stands at 35% because women are living longer. If we sorted out their health, they could work and we could get something back for our economy. Minister, please help us to make the case to your Treasury colleagues to get the money we need to get this country moving via the women.