By Marie Morice, Policy Campaigner at Wen and sexologist
The Women’s Health Strategy for England marks a long-overdue shift in how women’s health is recognised within UK policy. After years of women saying they are not listened to, it signals a real opportunity to reshape how our health system and public institutions support women throughout different stages of life.
The Strategy, launched last month, is already generating wider discussion across the women’s health sector. I recently attended an excellent webinar hosted by Wellbeing of Women, which brought together Professor Dame Lesley Regan, Gynaecologist, professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Imperial College London, alongside Janet Lindsay, CEO of Wellbeing of Women; Kate Lancaster, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists; and Dr Manisha Singh, Vice President of Clinical Quality at the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, to discuss priorities, next steps and implementation of the Strategy.
This growing level of attention reflects a broader shift: women’s and female health is finally being recognised as a major public health and policy issue. And that momentum matters.
For decades, women’s health has been fragmented, underfunded and too often dismissed. The Strategy signals a broader recognition of women’s lived experiences, including menstrual health, reproductive health, fertility, menopause and later-life care. It also reflects continued progress in embedding sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) within mainstream health policy conversations.
Overall, the Strategy is a positive step forward, particularly in improving NHS delivery, access and care pathways. That said, it remains much more focused on treatment and care than on prevention, especially the upstream environmental factors influencing women’s health in the first place.
What feels especially striking is that this gap is emerging at the same time as long-term health trends are worsening. Recent analysis from The Health Foundation shows that healthy life expectancy in the UK is declining, with women spending a greater proportion of their lives in poor health.
At the same time, wider inequalities remain deeply entrenched. Recent findings from Health Equity North highlighted the disproportionate health inequalities faced by women in the North of England, reinforcing how geography, poverty, race, housing and environment continue to influence women’s wellbeing over time.
This raises urgent questions about whether current policy approaches are sufficiently addressing the underlying drivers of poor health.
In particular, there is no meaningful reference to chemicals or environmental exposures, including endocrine disruptors, despite their relevance to many of the conditions identified as priorities in the Strategy, including reproductive health, hormone-related conditions and menopause.
There is also no integration with UK chemicals policy or discussion of cumulative exposure, despite growing evidence that women are exposed to multiple chemicals simultaneously over decades. Period products are considered primarily from an access and stigma perspective, but there is no discussion of their chemical composition, safety, or potential exposure risks.
Climate change is similarly largely absent as a women’s and female health issue, with no explicit discussion of gendered health impacts such as heat, air pollution, environmental stressors, or the wider implications of climate change on women’s lives.
A growing body of international medical evidence is also reinforcing these concerns. In April, I co-presented at an event hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Women’s Health Network alongside Helen Lynn, Dr Maddie de Vicq and Dr Amy Manning, discussing the environmental drivers of gyneocologic and reproductive health across the life course. The event explored recent guidance from the International Federation of Gyneocology and Obstetrics highlighting the growing evidence linking endocrine-disrupting chemicals, air pollution, climate-related stressors and toxic exposures to conditions including infertility, endometriosis, PCOS, fibroids, menopause and hormonally mediated cancers.
https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijgo.70547
The discussion also highlighted the lack of transparency and regulation surrounding period products, despite repeated exposure over many years and growing evidence of contaminants including PFAS, heavy metals and biocides in some products. The strong engagement from clinicians and health professionals reflected a growing recognition that environmental exposure is not simply an environmental issue, but a core women’s and female health issue that needs to be more fully integrated into healthcare, research and policy discussions.
This is also why Wen (Women’s Environmental Network) is currently coordinating an open letter from gynaecologists, obstetricians and healthcare professionals calling on the UK government to strengthen regulation of period products and improve transparency around ingredients and chemical safety.
From my perspective as a sexologist, another notable gap is the absence of any meaningful discussion of sexual wellbeing and pleasure. While there is welcome progress around reproductive health and aspects of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), the framing remains largely centred on healthcare delivery, reproduction and treatment.
This contrasts with emerging international conversations around women’s health. For example, proposals developed by the European Institute of Women’s Health towards a future EU Women’s Health Strategy explicitly position SRHR as a foundational pillar of women’s health, including not only access to contraception, maternal healthcare and reproductive autonomy, but also sexual rights, bodily autonomy and pleasure as part of overall wellbeing and quality of life.
This matters because sexual wellbeing is not a luxury or lifestyle issue. It is closely linked to physical health, mental wellbeing, relationships, confidence, autonomy and quality of life throughout women’s lives. When sexual health and pleasure are excluded from policy conversations, women’s health continues to be framed primarily through illness, risk and reproduction, rather than through primary prevention, wellbeing and lived experience.
The implications extend far beyond healthcare systems alone. Women’s long-term health affects participation in work, financial security, caregiving responsibilities, mental wellbeing and overall quality of life. When women spend more years living in poor health, the social and economic impacts ripple far beyond the individual.
At Wen, we believe this creates a clear opportunity to strengthen the discussion around prevention, environmental health and inequalities affecting women throughout their lives. Environmental health, including chemicals and climate-related risks, should be recognised as a missing prevention pillar within women’s health policy, rather than treated as a separate or secondary issue.
The Strategy’s life-stage framing aligns strongly with this approach. Women’s health does not exist separately from the environments women live in. Hormonal health, reproductive health, menopause, maternal health and overall wellbeing are all shaped by the conditions people are exposed to every day, often cumulatively and over decades.
The Women’s Health Strategy for England is an important step forward. What matters now is how we build on it and whether future policy is ambitious enough to address not only how we treat illness, but also the conditions driving long-term health outcomes for women in the first place.
Marie Morice, Policy Campaigner At Wen And Sexologist
Marie has over 25 years’ experience leading climate, sustainability, and gender equity initiatives at organisations including the UN and WWF. She is also a clinical sexologist, working at the intersection of women’s health, environmental justice, and SRHR. At Wen, Marie drives policy and campaign work on toxic chemicals, with a focus on protecting women’s health and advancing feminist approaches to environmental policy.
