The gender health gap

Medicine has been male-dominated for centuries, with women’s health historically misunderstood and misidentified. From ancient Greek ideas that women’s wombs wandered through their bodies causing madness, to 19th century notions of ‘hysteria’, women have consistently been prevented or seen as unable to tell the story of their own bodies.

Even today, there is a huge gender health gap. Women are still under-represented in medical trials meaning not enough is known about conditions that only affect them, or about how conditions affect men and women in different ways.

This disparity was outlined in the UK government’s recent women’s health strategy which explained how this gap in understanding can “lead to poorer advice and diagnosis and, as a result, worse outcomes”. It’s a situation especially acute for women of colour, older women, those with disabilities and LGBTQ+ women, who are particularly underrepresented in medical research.

By transforming their experiences into art, Lippett and other female artists are railing against the stigma attached to female health. By literally creating their own picture of health, they are breaking taboos and revealing exactly what their illnesses feel and look like to them, empowering and validating other women in the process.

Picture of health: the women turning chronic illness into empowering art