Women in the Nordic region, as elsewhere, live longer but spend significantly more years in poor health than men; globally, women spend about 25% more of their lives in poor health than men. Yet only around 5% of global health R&D funding is dedicated to women’s health, and just 1% to non‐oncology women‐specific conditions (World Economic Forum & McKinsey Health Institute, 2024). These gaps show how limited our understanding of women’s biology and health still is.

Too many women face a health system that fails to understand or respond to their needs. Knowledge about their own biology is minimal, leaving them without guidance on hormonal health, menstrual health, mental well-being, reproductive care, menopause, or hormone-related illnesses. Pain and symptoms are often dismissed or treated with medication rather than understanding the root causes. In a nationwide longitudinal study of 6.9 million people in Denmark, women were diagnosed about four years later than men across 770 non‐sex‐specific diseases (Westergaard et al. 2019).

Together, these gaps show how limited our understanding of women’s biology and health still is. Across the lifespan, women experience delayed diagnoses, inadequate support, and workplaces and systems that ignore female biology. The result is chronic stress, burnout, preventable illness, and reproductive challenges. These widespread gaps are rarely acknowledged, but they reveal a systemic failure. A systemic design flaw that can be corrected. 

A future we can actually build
September 8 2025, more than 130 people from across the Nordic region gathered for a workshop at the Danish Parliament to define what women’s health should look like in 2040. The result became a shared vision:

The Vision for 2040 makes one simple argument
A visionary starting point raises the bar. It doesn’t ask what’s possible. It defines what should be standard.

The Nordic equality story is incomplete
Across the Nordic countries, women still face diagnostic delays, biased research, inadequate menopause care, workplaces designed as if female biology doesn’t exist, and health systems that are not informed to handle female-related health issues.

This is no niche topic; it directly affects every life phase of half the population and resonates through the lives of the rest. It affects our economies, our workplaces, and our collective well-being.

We call on the Nordic Council of Ministers and Nordic governments to commit to the vision in the Nordic Charter for Women’s Health 2040.

This means committing to making women's health a political priority

• Nordic Governments commit to achieving parity in Healthy Life Years (HLY) so that 100% Nordic women and men reach a 1.0 ratio, ensuring women no longer spend more years in poor health than men by 2040.
• Nordic governments commit to introducing female biology into all university-level medical curricula. Curricula must explicitly state the status of gender-specific data, revealing whether protocols are evidence-based for women or if a knowledge gap currently exists.
• Nordic governments will mandate gender-data transparency as a funding criterion for all public research and clinical practice. Every project must explicitly disclose the status of sex-based data, with a requirement to publish sex-disaggregated results.
• Nordic governments urge the EMA to transition from voluntary to mandatory sex-disaggregated reporting. 
• Nordic governments commit to tying healthcare financing to measurable improvements in patients’ health-related quality of life, using validated tools such as EQ-5D/5L, rather than the volume of services provided.

Why your signature matters
A petition is how we construct a clear public mandate. Every voice behind this Charter is a building block of political will, making it exponentially harder for decision-makers to overlook the sheer volume of support for this change.

Women deserve systems that match their realities, not systems built around someone else’s biology.

Sign the petition. Share the vision.

Let’s make women’s health a birthright by 2040.
This vision is now captured in The Nordic Charter for Women’s Health 2040, launched at the Finnish Embassy in Copenhagen on December 8 2025, co-hosted by the Nordic Council of Ministers, The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, and the Nordic Women's Health Hub. Watch it.