The Gender Pain Gap

Since signing our Collaboration Charter last year, PolicyWISE has started working closely with a number of research projects from the OU’s Open Societal Challenges programme, in order to support and drive four nations policy impact and engagement.

One of these projects is ‘The Gender Pain Gap’, led by Dr Carrie Purcell, which aims to address notable inequality in health and wellbeing related to the Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) of women and other people with a uterus. Carrie’s research is investigating how SRH-related pain is understood, experienced and managed.

As part of PolicyWISE’s events in Scotland in May, we were pleased to be able to join Carrie and colleagues from across the sector to discuss how using a Sexual & Reproductive Justice lens could improve future SRH research, policy and practice – exploring policy gaps and using these to inform future visions. The workshop was facilitated by futures research consultancy AndThen.

We look forward to continuing to work with Carrie as this work progresses. The Women’s Health agenda in particular is one that is currently evolving across the four nations of the UK; Scottish Government are nearing the end of their 2021-2024 Women’s Health Plan (with the next iteration expected later this year), while the UK Government published a 10-year Strategy in 2022. Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to follow suit in the near future. Welsh Government has announced that the Welsh NHS is developing a Women’s Health Plan, and a public listening exercise is expected imminently in Northern Ireland, which is due to inform the development of a longer-term comprehensive Women’s Health Strategy.