Women have been trying harder to advocate for themselves in medical settings, and research has been gradually improving. However, the responsibility is still on systems that are lagging behind women’s actual health needs.
We looked at some cases of incomplete safety warnings and issues that are persisting in the medical and cosmetic world.
The Depo-Provera Case
The large population-based study published in the BMJ in 2024 showed that women who used the Depo-Provera injectable contraceptive for at least one year had an increased risk of developing meningioma, a typically non-cancerous but still life-altering tumor.
The contraceptive has already been in use for decades. However, the US labeling did not carry a meningioma warning for years, even though European labels included the warning already.
According to this Depo-Provera litigation overview article, the Food and Drug Administration only approved the label update in 2025, after people had already filed thousands of lawsuits.
It’s not just that the risk existed, as there’s always some risk involved in any medication, but the responsible health institutions failed to inform women of potential risks.
The lack of transparency in this case is not an outlier, but a part of a much broader problem.
Medical Devices and Drugs That Harmed Women – After They’ve Been Approved
The problem has repeated itself numerous times, leaving thousands of women with health issues that could have been avoided. It’s even worse that some of the products haven’t been removed from the market for years, although women reported the harm,
One of them is Essure, a permanent birth control device. Essure was marketed as minimally invasive, although it was implanted in the fallopian tubes, and it resulted in chronic pain, device migration, and autoimmune symptoms. It took over 40 thousands lawsuits to remove it from the market.
The next infamous medical device, the transvaginal mesh, was approved through the FDA’s 510(k) clearance process, meaning it did not have to go through clinical trials as it resembled an existing product. This product left tens of thousands of women with erosion injuries, nerve damage, and permanent pain. Again, it took too much time and legal struggle for the FDA to stop the sales of the mesh for pelvic organ prolapse.
These are just a few examples of how the system failed the people it was designed to protect. Some medium-risk devices can reach the market without human clinical trials, while many medications passed trials without being tested on women.
This leads to a situation where the impact on women’s health is understudied, while women pay the cost once the products are approved.
Underfunding and Lack of Research
Conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, and post-partum depression affect millions of women across the world, but they have been poorly researched, underfunded, and ignored for decades.
Endometriosis, for example, impacts around 1 in 10 women, and despite its destructive potential, infertility risks, and often excruciating pain, it still takes 6.6 years on average just to receive a diagnosis.
And while we’re collectively more aware of endo, the structural diagnostic gaps are still lagging, and the situation is improving very, very slowly.
One of the main causes of this is that women’s pain is often dismissed as psychological, or it’s considered a “normal” part of the female experience. This lack of care has real consequences.
One McKinsey analysis showed that women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health compared to men, and it will take years to close the gap.
The study suggests five types of actions for closing the women’s health gap:
- First, improve data collection methodologies by actually counting women properly and setting standards for data collection based on sex and gender.
- Conduct research into women’s health and actual health differences between the sexes.
- Improve clinical education, care, and guidelines to effectively implement the new science.
- Improve health equity and inclusion.
- Direct more resources to women’s health and support women’s leadership and insight in medical and social settings.
Finally, this will also take cultural change. Believing women’s pain, taking their symptoms seriously instead of attributing them to psychological causes, and treating women’s health as standard and necessary, not just a niche field.
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