Women in Scotland now face higher death rates from heart disease, stroke, respiratory illness and Long COVID than men, despite turning up at hospital just as often. A powerful new report from Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland lays bare a gender gap that has quietly widened for years.
The charity’s first ever Women’s Health Strategic Advisor, Jessica Wilson, says the country still understands men’s health better than women’s – and the price is being paid in lives.
The Numbers That Should Shock Every Woman in Scotland
Heart disease kills more than twice as many women in Scotland as breast cancer. Yet most women still believe breast cancer is their biggest threat.
After a heart attack, women are less likely than men to leave hospital with the full set of drugs proven to prevent a second one. Following a stroke, women receive less optimal follow-up care.
In respiratory conditions the picture is even worse:
- Women make up 66% of all asthma deaths in Scotland
- Women are now almost twice as likely as men to die from asthma
- COPD death rates have pulled ahead for women in recent years
- Long COVID affects far more women than men and lasts longer
Jessica Wilson calls it “a consistent pattern that no one is talking about loudly enough”.
Why Does the System Keep Failing Women?
Medicine has historically been built around the male body. Clinical trials still under-represent women. Symptoms in women are often labelled “atypical” – which too often becomes code for “we don’t take this as seriously”.
Many doctors still believe heart attack pain is dramatically different in women. It is not. Chest pain, jaw pain, back pain, shortness of breath, nausea and overwhelming fatigue remain the core symptoms for both sexes. The real difference is that women’s symptoms are more likely to be dismissed or misdiagnosed.
The result? Delayed treatment and worse outcomes.
Scotland’s Women’s Health Plan: Progress, But Not Fast Enough
The Scottish Government published phase two of its Women’s Health Plan in 2024 and work on phase three is under way. Campaigners welcome the direction but say cardiovascular, stroke and respiratory conditions must move from the margins to the centre of the strategy.
Jessica Wilson is blunt: “These are not niche issues. They are the biggest killers and disablers of women in Scotland. They belong front and centre in any serious women’s health plan.”
She wants three immediate changes:
- Mandatory gender-specific training for all frontline NHS staff
- Routine collection and publication of health data broken down by sex and deprivation
- National public campaigns that tell women the truth: heart disease and stroke are bigger threats than breast cancer
Real Lives, Real Pain
Behind every statistic is a woman who was told her chest pain was anxiety, a woman who struggled back to work with Long COVID while her male colleague recovered faster, a woman who died from asthma because her symptoms were not treated with the same urgency as a man’s would have been.
Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland is now recruiting women with lived experience to its Voices of Lived Experience Panel. Their stories will shape the charity’s new Women’s Health Plan due this summer.
The message from those women is simple: stop designing health services around a 70 kg man.
Flexible appointment times, community rehabilitation that fits around caring responsibilities, and peer support groups run by and for women are proving they make a difference.
Time to Act Before More Lives Are Lost
Scotland has a chance to lead the UK in closing the gender health gap. But it will take political courage, targeted investment and a willingness to admit that systems built decades ago no longer serve half the population.
Jessica Wilson ends with a plea that every woman in Scotland deserves to hear:
“This is not about blaming men or comparing whose health is worse. It is about making sure women finally get the same urgency, the same research, the same prevention and the same quality of care that men have always had.
Because no woman in Scotland should have her life cut short simply because the system was never designed with her in mind.”
What do you think? Have you or someone you love experienced poorer care because of gender? Share your story below – and join the conversation on social media with #CloseTheGenderHealthGap.
