Posted by Shani Sharma
on March 08, 2026
By: Namita Thapar and Samvida Patel
Every year, with optimism, I check India’s health and survival rank in the annual Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF typically surveys around 150 countries, and every year, I am hugely disappointed to find that women’s health in India ranks in the bottom ~1st–3rd percentile!
In 2025, India ranked 143rd out of 148 total countries surveyed. WEF determines country ranks based on two metrics:
1. Sex ratio at birth: How many female births there are relative to male births.
2. Healthy life expectancy: The number of years women are expected to spend in good health relative to men.
Spoiler alert: Neither are where they should be.
Seeing such an overall low rank year-on-year continues to upset and shock me. India is a country that has exported some of the smartest people running companies globally and has one of the most vibrant and growing democracies in the world. So why does women’s health remain an unending plight?
Let’s take a look.
Why Is Women’s Health in India So Poor?
There are a multitude of reasons why women’s health continues to be a struggle today. But the unfortunate truth at the core of all of them is this:
Women in our country, due to years of social conditioning, do not prioritize themselves.
As a result, this learned behaviour creates several barriers to their health, contributing to conditions that disproportionately affect women. For example, more than half of women in India have anemia compared to only 25% of men.
Here are 5 cultural barriers affecting women’s health in India to date:
1. Dual responsibilities and lack of time. Women are less likely to go for annual health checkups. In a study in rural Odisha, women reported having no time for health checkups between juggling outdoor labour and household work.
2. Lack of financial resources and independence. In the same study, it was found that men, generally being breadwinners, often spent money on alcohol. This would leave less money to spend on nutrient-rich foods or other women’s health needs.
3. Eating last and eating the least. A review on women’s well-being published by the UNFPA highlights how women’s learned self-sacrificial behaviours result in prioritizing feeding males, in-laws, and children before themselves. Where resources are constrained, there is often little left to eat for themselves.
4. Lack of support from husband and family. Data from NFHS-5 showed that out of 108,785 Indian women, 34% did not get permission to go to a health facility.
Similarly, another survey of 229 rural women found that women did not participate in a public health intervention because more than half cited lack of husband’s support and around 28% cited no family support.
5. Gender bias. Worldwide, at least 87-90% of men and women both hold at least one gender bias, but in India 99-100% of men and women hold these biases. This shows in India’s rank in the 2022 UNDP’s Global Gender Parity Index, which was 122 out of 148. A major aspect of women’s health where this manifests is during pregnancy.
Because pregnancy is considered a natural and “normal” phenomenon, women are often told to endure whatever symptoms they’re going through. This makes it difficult to distinguish between expected discomfort and complications that need treatment.
What Role Does Socioeconomic Status Play in the Health of Indian Women?
Of course, there are larger issues that affect women’s health in economically disadvantaged communities significantly more, including:
Lack of education and awareness. Within the NFHS-5, an analysis revealed that only 2% of women underwent cervical cancer screening; those who did choose to have screenings were generally older women who were employed, educated, and had media exposure, their own bank account and phone.
Physical barriers to healthcare access. According to the 5th round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), only 1/3 of women utilized full maternal care during pregnancy, one of the reasons being that centers were too far for them to travel to.
But even when education and financial security are taken into account, a lot of the same social conditioning and gender bias trends flourish.
For instance, for the sake of giving birth to a male child, women often go through multiple abortions and pregnancies. This is in spite of the PCPNDT Act which prohibits sex selection.
According to a Pew Research piece, the “improvement” in India’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) as of 2019-2021 is 108 male births for every 100 female births compared to the natural ratio of 105 male births for every 100 female births. This translated to 410,000 “missing” girls linked to sex-selective abortions in 2019 and approximately 9 million “missing” girls from 2000-2020.
The irony is that on one hand, the report outlines how attitudes are changing more so in urbanized, educated, higher socioeconomic groups. However, it’s these very groups that have access to fetal ultrasounds and clinics.
In fact, a Guttmacher report revealed that after a first-born daughter, the chances of the second child being a girl dropped sharply among women with more than 10 years of education, even though the sex ratio for the first-born children stayed the same.
Maybe it’s no surprise then that India’s rank around women’s health is where it’s at.
The question now is, where do we go from here?
How Can We Improve Women’s Health in India?
There is a lot of systemic change that has yet to unfold, like funding research in the women’s health sector, improving gender-specific healthcare solutions, normalizing conversations and education around periods, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause.
But on an individual level, these are the three biggest things Indian women can start doing today.
1. It’ll always be easier said than done, but speak up.
Don’t get me wrong, the responsibility isn’t women’s alone. Society as a whole has to dismantle its own narratives like silently suffering as a virtue in women and menstruation and menopause being culturally and morally a problem. This is still a country where something as normal as periods continues to have a practice of wrapping sanitary pads in newspaper or black bags!
While more and more women are voicing their needs, many women’s lived experiences still include gaslighting. When women need to take a break from a meeting to cope with their hot flashes or change a pad, it is often labeled as ‘drama’. Days when a woman is assertive in a meeting, whispers like “is she PMSing?” and “maybe she’s ultra-hormonal due to her pregnancy and is taking it out on us” start to spread.
But only when women put themselves first and start fiercely advocating for themselves can the vicious cycle of health gaslighting and silence be broken.
2. Educate yourself about women’s health and spread that awareness.
A lot of women go undiagnosed because they are not aware that the problems they endure are symptoms of underlying conditions.
Here are some health resources that provide comprehensive information on various health topics focusing on women:
3. Remind yourself that you ARE worth it.
There is a lot of unlearning that needs to happen in order to make your health a priority. It doesn’t happen overnight.
But not fully embracing this truth can have a negative compounding effect on your health.
As more women get educated, enter the workforce, and become financially independent, I sincerely hope to see India’s rank in women’s health climb. Women make up half of the population. If we want India to move forward as a country — and more importantly, if we want to strive towards a more equal, empathetic, and fair society — it cannot be done by ignoring the health needs of nearly half the population.
Happy Women’s Day!
