Women Deserve To Be Heard.

Women make up 50% of the global population, yet women are still unfairly reflected in healthcare research. This has huge implications for the quality of care and can have life-or-death consequences. As a result of women being less represented in healthcare research, there are fewer treatments available for women-specific diseases. In addition, because women are unfairly represented in clinical studies, general disease treatments may be less effective for women or have high side effects. In some cases, there may be no treatment at all, as disorders have been simply ignored!

Women's bodies function differently than men's. There are obvious reproductive differences that impact women throughout their life—fertility and pregnancy issues, menopause as well as other gynecological disorders and cancers of the breast, ovaries and cervix that affect women.

In honor of International Women's Day, I'd like to draw attention to this important healthcare issue. In order to enable change, we must first understand the problem.