The Research Gap: How Power, Money, and Status Left Women’s Health Behind

In the vast landscape of medical research, women’s health has often been an afterthought. Despite comprising half the population, women—especially those navigating complex hormonal transitions like menopause—remain underrepresented in clinical studies, underfunded in health research, and underserved in health policy. This neglect is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of systems shaped by entrenched power dynamics, socio-economic inequality, and deeply embedded gender norms.

Medical research does not exist in a vacuum—it follows the money. Research funding is often driven by pharmaceutical profitability, military needs, and diseases that impact the workforce—specifically, the male workforce. For decades, the so-called “standard human” in medical studies was male: male animals, male cells, male bodies. Even as late as the 1990s, women were routinely excluded from clinical trials due to their “hormonal fluctuations”—a factor that ironically makes them more in need of precise data, not less.

When the majority of decision-makers at the funding table are men—and when profit-driven motives prioritize conditions with more straightforward biological models—it’s unsurprising that menopause, menstrual disorders, autoimmune diseases (which disproportionately affect women), and chronic pain syndromes have been left with meager research portfolios. It is no coincidence that Viagra was developed and approved with speed and funding, while treatments for female sexual dysfunction still linger in obscurity.

The people setting the research agendas are overwhelmingly those with access to institutional power: elite universities, government agencies, biotech companies. Historically, these domains were dominated by men from privileged socio-economic backgrounds. Their lived experiences did not include periods, perimenopause, endometriosis, or polycystic ovarian syndrome. As a result, these issues were viewed as niche, embarrassing, or simply less urgent.

This lack of lived experience among decision-makers creates blind spots—not just in what gets researched, but in how questions are framed, which outcomes are valued, and which bodies are deemed worthy of study. Menopause, for example, is still too often treated as a fringe topic or a lifestyle issue, rather than a major endocrine event that affects cognition, bone density, cardiovascular health, and mental well-being for decades of a woman’s life.

Layered on top of this is the issue of who gets to speak about their health. Women from lower socio-economic backgrounds—those juggling multiple jobs, caregiving responsibilities, and limited access to healthcare—often lack the resources, time, or social capital to advocate for better care or participate in research studies. Their pain is more likely to be dismissed, their concerns pathologized, their symptoms attributed to stress or emotional instability. This compounds the research gap with a data gap—one that is racialized, class-based, and persistent.

Even among educated, affluent women, stigma and shame surrounding menopause often silence open discussion. And when silence surrounds a health issue, it becomes invisible to policymakers and funders.

Where there is a vacuum, something always fills it. In the case of women’s health—especially around menopause—that vacuum has too often been filled by opportunistic marketing, pseudoscience, and predatory wellness influencers. When evidence-based medicine fails to offer answers, and when even well-educated women cannot find reliable guidance through traditional healthcare systems, the result is a marketplace primed for exploitation.

Desperate for symptom relief and validation, women turn to what’s available: overpriced supplements with vague claims, hormone “balancing” teas, unregulated bioidentical hormone cocktails, and programs that promise to “reset your hormones in 30 days.” These are not harmless diversions. They capitalize on pain and confusion, often at great financial and emotional cost. Worse, they can delay or prevent women from accessing legitimate medical care.

This isn’t just about misinformation—it’s about power. The absence of robust, accessible science around menopause and women’s health issues has created fertile ground for an entire industry that thrives on fear and ambiguity. When you tell a woman she is “hormonally broken” or “aging poorly” and then sell her a £200 supplement regime or detox plan, you are not empowering her. You are exploiting her. And it is all the more insidious because it masquerades as care.

Meanwhile, many healthcare professionals remain either uninformed or dismissive, leaving women to navigate this confusing terrain alone. This dynamic reinforces the idea that women’s bodies are inherently mysterious, difficult to treat, or worse—unworthy of serious scientific inquiry. It shifts responsibility away from systems and institutions and onto individuals, who are then told to “do the research” and “take charge of their health” without being given the tools to do so. Then we shame women for being gullible and succumbing to pseudoscience. Women are not gullible—they are desperate.

The commodification of suffering is not new, but in the context of menopause and midlife health, it reveals how the failures of science and medicine are converted into profit. It is a betrayal not just by snake oil sellers, but by the institutions that allowed them to flourish in the first place.

The economic fallout is real: women in midlife are leaving the workforce, reducing hours, or suffering in silence because the healthcare system is not built to understand or support them. In the workplace, where leadership and influence are often forged in midlife, this has ripple effects far beyond the individual. It is not just a health issue—it is a productivity issue, a gender equity issue, and a public health failure.

This is precisely why representation matters—not just in clinics, but in research labs, on funding committees, in boardrooms, and at the policymaking table. When women are at the top—particularly those who understand the lived experience of navigating health, career, and caregiving—they bring priorities that have long been neglected. They ask different questions. They fund different research. They build different systems.

Menopause should not be a career derailment. It should not be a silent struggle or an unscientific guessing game. It is a universal biological transition that deserves the same scientific rigor and respect as any other major health milestone.

To build a future where women’s health is taken seriously, we must stop treating it as a niche concern and start recognizing it as foundational to economic stability, innovation, and societal well-being. That means elevating women’s voices, funding women’s bodies, and demanding a healthcare system—and a research agenda—that works for all of us.

Because when women rise, everyone benefits. But to rise, we need more than resilience. We need recognition, research, and real support. And that will only happen when we sit at equal numbers at the table.

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Sybille Hazward