Our position on women's health
Our evidence
Postnatal mental health care is not working well for most women
Our recent research found that some GP practices are not complying with the requirement to deliver a six-week postnatal consultation for all mothers, and only one in five (22%) of people we heard from were satisfied with the time their GP spent talking to them about their mental health, despite it being a requirement for these consultations.
Women are disproportionally affected by costs of living
Our cost of living polling has highlighted that women are disproportionately likely to cut back on heating, food, and use of essential appliances in the face of the cost of living crisis.
Women are more likely to face long waits for non-urgent treatment
They are more likely to be negatively impacted with relationships, socialising, ability to provide care for a loved one, and mental health and wellbeing suffering as a result.
Women are more likely to speak up about their experiences of health and care
A disproportionate share of the evidence that local Healthwatch gather from patients and the public about their experiences of services comes from women. There are many possible reasons for this, including women feeling less listened to by front line services, or being more likely to ‘give back’ to others by sharing their experiences.
What we’re calling for
While there has been much focus on traditional ‘women’s health issues’ in recent years (e.g. menopause, cervical cancer, IVF), we believe that tackling women’s health is not just about health issues specific to women, but about understanding the unequal distribution of wider health outcomes between men and women.
The Women’s Health Strategy for England, published in August 2022, takes a welcome life approach, focusing on women’s health policy and services throughout their lives, as well as boosting representation of women’s voices at all levels of the health and care system.
Yet this strategy is currently very broad, with many commitments to investment and initiatives, but few clear goals and markers for how things will improve. An implementation framework for the strategy should be produced as soon as possible, and women’s experiences should be central to evaluating progress against the strategy at regular intervals.
We also want to see greater focus on women’s experiences of feeling listened to by the health service. We know that women’s experiences of pain or knowledge of their own health conditions are often taken less seriously by clinical professionals. Listening better to women is the first and essential step to making sure that healthcare meets women’s needs.
What action we’ve taken
Experiences of maternal mental health
We have conducted various research projects focused on women’s health issues. In particular, we have had a focus on maternal mental health. Back in 2019, our work sharing the experiences of almost 1,800 women on mental health during their journey to parenthood directly contributed to the introduction of mental health checks in the postnatal consultation for mothers.
In 2023, we published the first phase of our findings looking at the impact of this policy, finding that for many women, the postnatal consultations are frequently carried out as a tick-box exercise, where mental health is not treated as a priority or not assessed at all. Following on from this work, NHS England published a three year maternity delivery plan, which set out improvements in line with several of our recommendations, including promised additional guidance for GPs on how to carry out six-week postnatal checks and commitments to commission the additional community perinatal mental health services promised in the Long Term Plan.
Impact of the cost of living crisis
As part of our focus on health inequalities, we have also been working on improving demographic data collection across the Healthwatch network, to ensure we can compare the views and health outcomes across demographic groups. Where we have commissioned representative polling by external organisations, we have analysed differential outcomes for women. For example, our cost of living polling has highlighted how women are disproportionately likely to cut back essential spending in the face of the cost of living crisis.
We have committed to an organisation-wide research and advocacy project focused on women’s health for 2023/24 and are currently scoping our approach.
