From young to older woman – the conditions shaping health across the life course

– Diagnoses that affect only or primarily women, such as breast cancer, endometriosis and premenstrual symptoms, are important, but they account for only a small share of the total disease burden. Psychiatric conditions and pain are central challenges for women’s health across all stages of life,” says Ylva.

Women are also sick-listed to a much greater extent than men.

– Stress-related ill health is one reason, she says.

The differences appear early. Mental ill health among girls has increased sharply and carries over into adulthood. Stress-related diagnoses are the single largest cause of sickness absence among women and are particularly prevalent in occupations where women are in the majority. Here, two patterns intersect: a gender-segregated labour market in which women more often work in people-facing occupations with high demands and low control, and norms surrounding responsibility in the home.

The report also highlights variations within groups of women as important factors for health, offering a more nuanced picture of women’s health. These include socioeconomic conditions, ethnic background, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Women’s finances play a major role in health

Women’s economic situation plays a significant role in health, especially how income develops early in life compared with men. Peter Skoglund Thoursie, Professor of Economics, uses the concept of wage promotion to capture both unexplained large pay rises and increases that result from promotion or changing jobs. A wage promotion is defined as a situation in which an employee receives a pay rise in one year that is at least 10 percentage points higher than the average pay increase of colleagues at the same company. He argues that differences in health outcomes between women and men cannot be understood without looking at economic trajectories over the life course.

– Men are more likely to receive a major wage promotion early in their careers, and this often coincides with starting a family and having their first child, he says.

Women generally reduce their working hours, have fewer career opportunities, or choose not to invest in their careers to the same extent as men. Working hours explain a large part of this, but not everything.

– Even when both work the same number of hours, women receive fewer wage promotions. Norms, preferences, and the ability to combine work and family interact in a complex way that affects income, pension entitlements – and ultimately, most likely, health.

Medical advances affect men and women differently

Medical progress has uneven effects. Over recent decades, cardiovascular care has advanced rapidly – an area in which men are more severely affected than women. By contrast, comparable advances have not been made for the conditions that dominate women’s disease burden: mental ill health, pain, and autoimmune diseases. The result is a paradox: men’s life expectancy is increasing, while women’s healthy life years are not keeping pace. Women still live longer than men – but with more years of functional impairment.

As a resident physician in anaesthesia and intensive care, and Vice Chair of the Swedish Association of Women Doctors, Sofia Kühner operates at the intersection of clinical practice, research, and policy. The association, which has existed for more than a hundred years, initiated the report Gender, Gender Norms and (Ill) Health (2025) to provide an up-to-date picture of how sex and gender affect health and healthcare.

– Men are often overrepresented in diseases with high mortality, while women are overrepresented in chronic conditions with high morbidity, such as autoimmune diseases, pain conditions, and mental ill health, she says.

Sofia repeatedly returns to the issue of gender bias in healthcare – how assumptions about gender influence which questions are asked, which investigations are carried out, and which treatments are offered.

– There are tendencies for men to receive more advanced care and more expensive treatments, while women are more often given a psychological explanation for somatic symptoms without further investigation or treatment. This naturally has consequences for health, work capacity, and the ability to participate actively in society, she says.

At the same time, Sofia wants to nuance the image of so-called “women’s diseases” as neglected or unscientific. In several areas – such as contraception and abortion – there is already solid, well-established research.

– The problem is sometimes a lack of implementation, and that the medical knowledge we have does not always reach everyone across our long country. At the same time, there are areas that are clearly under-researched, especially autoimmune diseases, where the majority of those affected are women. These conditions are rarely fatal, but they cause long-term functional impairment and account for a large share of the loss of quality of life in women’s later years, she concludes.

Research hub aims to reduce inequalities in maternity care

The newly established Forte-funded centre MAMA Research Hub at Linköping University is led by Professor and Senior Consultant Marie Blomberg. She shares Sofia’s view that implementation is often lacking and that care is unequal. She describes maternity and postpartum care as one of the clearest examples of how gaps between medical knowledge and actual practice affect women’s health.

– Today, it matters where in the country you give birth. That is completely unacceptable, she says.

According to Marie, complications during pregnancy and childbirth that go undetected by healthcare can have consequences later in life. She stresses that postpartum care has long been a neglected area, lacking a coherent structure, despite its crucial importance for women’s long-term health.

– If you have had preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, you should not simply be sent off into the void. The links to later cardiovascular disease are clear. Yet these women are not followed up.

Marie describes maternity and obstetric care as islands, where different services are poorly coordinated and digital systems do not support women’s actual care journeys. The aim of the MAMA Research Hub is therefore to create a coherent, equitable and person-centred care pathway through pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, where resources are used where they do the most good and where each woman receives an individual plan rather than a standardised template.

– We need a paradigm shift. Women today expect to be involved – and they have every right to be. Healthcare now needs to catch up, she says.

An intersectional, holistic approach to women’s health

Sofia Kühner from the Swedish Association of Women Doctors notes that economic and organisational factors in healthcare reinforce inequalities. Reimbursement models can make women-dominated areas less prioritised, geographical distances affect access, and political initiatives are often short-term. All of this creates unequal conditions for both healthcare staff and patients.

For Sofia, the conclusion is clear: gender-equal health can never be achieved through healthcare interventions alone. Change requires three things: that political decisions are scrutinised through the lens of gender equality and public health, that research systematically includes women, and that healthcare structures are adapted to women’s living conditions.

– Health considerations must be integrated into all policy areas – the labour market, social insurance, education, regional development. Otherwise, we will continue to reproduce the same patterns, she says.

She emphasises the importance of viewing society through an intersectional perspective – how gender, ethnicity, age, class and disability interact and shape individuals’ life conditions.

– It is not enough to ask women or men? We also need to dare to ask: which women, which men – and under what conditions? Only then can we truly begin to talk about gender-equal health.