There is a lot of talk about the gender wage gap, but very few discuss the gender health gap. Closing the gap between care for women and men could add $1 trillion to the global GDP if it were closed, according to a report from McKinsey and the World Economic Forum.
Anita Zaidi President, Gender Equality Division at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the gender health gap and to shed light on the newly created global alliance the that the foundation is hoping will help close the gap.
Zaidi defines the gender health gap as “the long-term neglect of women’s health,” which means that, though women live longer, they spend more of their lives living in poorer health.
The new global alliance aimed at closing the gap will target a few key ares, Zaidia say, including financing, science, technology, and innovation, and increasing public awareness.
The economic toll of the gender health gap is multifaceted and “prevents women from doing their best work,” notes Zaidi, explaining how women suffer from things like fatigue and exhaustion from ailments that can be easily treated.
"There is a tremendous gain to the economy,” insists Zaidi who believes that closing the gap goes beyond just health.
When it comes to solutions that can be implemented quickly, Zaidi points to things like Intravenous iron shots for anemia and cervical cancer vaccines that already exist but need to be deployed more widely to truly make a dent in closing the gap.
This interview is part of Yahoo Finance's exclusive coverage from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where our team will speak to top decision-makers as well as preeminent leaders in business, finance, and politics about the world’s most pressing issues and priorities for the coming year.
Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: A trillion dollars. That's how much could be added to global GDP annually by 2040 if the gender health gap is closed. And joining me now is someone who is working on just that. It's the findings of a report from her group that were just released here at the World Economic Forum. Anita Zaidi, president of the Gender Equality Division at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is with me now. So first of all, just to set the backdrop here, what is the gender health gap? How should people think about that?
ANITA ZAIDI: Yes. Thank you, Julie. It's wonderful to be here. And the gender health gap is basically the long-term neglect of women's health. So that women now, although live longer, they spend 25% more of their life in poor health. And a lot of that is actually working age women. And so here we have an opportunity. And why I'm so excited about being here is the launch of this alliance, global alliance for women's health. That is an opportunity to close the gender health gap.
JULIE HYMAN: So how do we do that? I mean, I imagine it's a pretty big job that we're talking about here a big task. So it has to be attacked on a number of fronts. The alliance is doing that, a number of groups coming together. So how do you go about doing it?
ANITA ZAIDI: Yeah. So it's the first time actually that we've got a group like this together. More than 40 organizations have already joined. And what we're committing to do is to addressing the financing gap, addressing the science and technology and innovation gap, and then raising public awareness about what the opportunity space is, because it's not, of course, saving lives and improving lives and healthy lives is important. But there's actually a tremendous gain to the economy, like $1 trillion over by 2040, 1.7% GDP per year, $3 for every dollar invested. That's the economic opportunity.
JULIE HYMAN: And so when we talk about that economic opportunity, are we thinking about it because of lost productivity on the part of these women? Are we talking about the cost it takes to care for those women when they are ill? Is that what is causing-- what would unlock that opportunity?
ANITA ZAIDI: Yes, so that's a great question. So it's the health costs, and it's the not being able to participate in the workforce, and it's fatigue and exhaustion from many of these conditions that then prevent women from doing their best work. So I can give you an example of health costs-- anemia. So half a billion women around the world have iron deficiency anemia, not enough iron in their diet, and related to also heavy periods sometimes. So women lose iron, get anemic. And that causes fatigue, exhaustion, and inability to-- depression, and inability to give their full selves to their families and their work.
And these are very simple tools that we have to address these kinds of issues. But people just don't know.
JULIE HYMAN: Like in the case of anemia, for example, what would be the tool that you're now going to deploy?
ANITA ZAIDI: So, yes, iron-- nutritious diets there are supplements and a really good new advance for pregnancy, because anemia is a very big problem in pregnancy. 40% of women pregnant women actually have anemia. We're talking about iron deficiency anemia. And there is a single shot that you can do, intravenous iron to correct that. And it has not been widely deployed around the world. And we can do it.
JULIE HYMAN: So that's one of the things that you're going to be doing through this group.
ANITA ZAIDI: Through this group, yes. Another opportunity is cervical cancer, which we now know there is a vaccine, that one shot to a girl will prevent cervical cancer from happening. And that's 300,000 deaths every year that happen from cervical cancer in the prime of women's lives.
JULIE HYMAN: Anita, why hasn't an alliance like this been formed before? I mean, these-- it's not that they're simple problems to solve, they're big problems. But they're fairly straightforward. You know, anemia, you give them the supplement, for example. So why is this the first time that this is happening?
ANITA ZAIDI: Yeah. That's a really good question. And it's just been a chronic underinvestment in women's health and having the data gap that doesn't even tell people that this is a problem, right. And so what's new now is actually we have been investing in data from the foundation to understand the scope of these problems. And we do now have lots of simple tools to address them, right.
And, in fact, last year we got together with the NIH in the United States to co convene a big group of women from around the world, which included women who suffer from problems that have not had any scientific attention and included people from scientific backgrounds, from industry, to say how do we-- what's the opportunity map for innovation for women's health?
And so there is momentum now to bring all of these actors, stakeholders together to really do something about this.
JULIE HYMAN: And so how quickly-- just quickly here, how quickly is all of this going to be deployed and start being enacted?
ANITA ZAIDI: So some of it can be done right away, like the HPV vaccine, available today. Get one dose to every girl out there.
JULIE HYMAN: All right. Anita Zaidi, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.