The Circular Connection: Why Women's Health Is a Financial Inclusion Issue.

Published: 2024  |  Perspective updated: 2025

A woman will spend, on average, nine years of her life in poor health.

Nine years. Of reduced presence, reduced productivity, reduced capacity at work, at home, and in the community. And with each of those years, a reduction in earning potential — compounding over a lifetime into the financial gap we have been trying to close for decades.

I have written before about the gender pension gap. What I want to make the case for here is something slightly different: that the gap between men's and women's financial outcomes is not only a financial services problem. It is, in significant part, a health problem. And that if we want to close the financial gap, we need to take women's health seriously as an economic issue — not just a welfare one.

The health gap by numbers

Women spend 25% more time in poor health than men on average. That statistic, from McKinsey Health Institute's landmark 2024 report on the women's health gap, is striking in its scale. It is not a marginal difference. It is a quarter more time spent unable to be fully present and productive — and it falls disproportionately during women's prime working years.

The McKinsey research found that closing the women's health gap could reduce the time women spend in poor health by almost two-thirds, add at least seven healthy days per woman per year, and boost the global economy by at least $1 trillion annually by 2040. For every $1 invested in women's health, approximately $3 is projected in economic growth.

These are not small numbers. They are not niche. They are the scale of what is currently being left on the table.

The circular opportunity

What I find most compelling about this is the circularity. Poor health outcomes reduce women's earning potential. Lower earnings reduce pension savings and long-term financial resilience. Financial stress and insecurity worsen health outcomes. And so it continues, in a loop that the financial services industry and the health sector tend to address separately — when the evidence increasingly suggests they need to be addressed together.

About 50% of the health burden affecting women falls during working age — the years when pension contributions are being made, careers are being built, and the financial trajectory for the rest of life is being set. If a woman is spending significantly more of those years managing health conditions that are undertreated, underdiagnosed, or simply unrecognised, the financial consequences follow inevitably.

This is not a case for medicalising women's financial lives. It is a case for recognising that bodies and bank accounts are connected — and that any serious attempt to improve financial inclusion for women needs to take that connection seriously.

What the research calls for

The McKinsey and World Economic Forum report identifies five areas of action: investing in women-centric research to fill knowledge and data gaps; systematically collecting sex, ethnicity, and gender-specific data; enhancing access to gender-specific care; creating incentives for new financing models; and establishing business policies that support women's health.

That last point is where employers and financial services organisations have a direct role. Business policies that support women's health — flexible working arrangements, workplace menstrual health support, menopause policies, access to healthcare through employee benefits — are not just welfare measures. They are financial inclusion measures. They are the conditions under which women can sustain careers, maintain pension contributions, and build the financial resilience that the gap currently denies them.

The femtech sector is beginning to build the tools to make some of this more accessible — apps, wearables, platforms for diagnosis and care. The McKinsey research identified nine conditions driving 40% of the health gap economic opportunity, representing a significant and growing commercial market alongside the social case. That is a signal that the private sector has both the incentive and the responsibility to act.

What I believe

I have come to think that the reason the gender financial gap persists despite decades of awareness and policy attention is partly that we have been treating symptoms rather than causes. Auto-enrolment helps. Financial education helps. Better product design helps. But none of these fully address a situation where the structural conditions of women's lives — including their health — make it harder to build financial resilience in the first place.

The circular opportunity I keep coming back to is this: invest in making women healthier, and you improve their financial outcomes. Improve their financial outcomes, and you improve their health. These are not separate projects. They are the same project.

The financial services industry, the health sector, employers, and government all have a role. And the femtech and women's health sectors that are growing rapidly are building some of the tools that could help. The question is whether the different parts of this ecosystem are willing to work together rather than in the separate silos they have historically occupied.

I think they should be. The evidence is compelling. And the opportunity — economic, social, and human — is too significant to leave on the table.