Women’s health remains in crisis, even as countries around the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Billions of women are not receiving needed testing, their emotional health is getting worse, and nearly a billion women are living with daily physical pain.
For the First time in the Index's history, the rate of women tested for cancer has declined.
In Year 4, just 10% of women were tested for any type of cancer -- down two percentage points from Years 1 and 2. This translates into 60 million fewer women getting tested.
Women are struggling more to meet their basic needs today than at any point in almost two decades.
Thirty-eight percent of women said there were times in the past 12 months that they could not afford food. This ties the previous high since Gallup World Poll first posed this question in 2005. The 32% who could not afford adequate shelter is also a new high.
High levels of worry and sadness are negatively affecting women's emotional health.
About 200 million more women are worried and sad today than four years ago.
More women are experiencing pain and have health problems.
More than one third of women say they were in pain a lot of the previous day and more than one quarter have health problems that keep them from everyday activities -- representing nearly 1 billion women.
Other Global Findings:
The percentage of women tested for HIV is zero in some countries. The Index asked women for the first time whether they had been tested in the past year for HIV. Reported testing ranges from less than 0.5% in a host of countries to 41% in Uganda.
