Viagra gets better funding than women’s health, says Laura Bates

It’s time to recognise that “all women’s healthcare is in crisis”, said Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates.

In an exclusive by The Independent earlier this month, leading health experts warned that “threadbare” NHS maternity care is leaving new mothers dangerously at risk, as mental health and community services are being slashed.

The first UK inquiry into birth trauma was published last week, with its authors calling for a system where “poor care is the exception rather than rule”.

The inquiry encountered incidents where women had experienced birth injuries so severe they had been forced to stop working, as well as accounts of babies that were stillborn or born with conditions that were caused by mistakes and failures, many of which were covered up before and during labour.

Speaking on a panel at Hay Festival, in partnership with The Independent, Bates said that “anything that affects women is low priority”.

“We need investment, we need care, we need to actually do some research into women’s health, and into the impact that all of this has,” she continued. “We do a huge amount more research and put loads more funding into Viagra than we do into issues affecting women – go figure.

“So it’s a crisis. We need to recognise it’s a crisis, we need to recognise it’s a gendered crisis, and we need to invest.”

Bates also spoke of a “forgotten generation” of women during Covid, who were “forced to give birth alone while pubs were heaving”. She called this “absolutely unacceptable prioritising by a group of men in a room making their own decisions.”

“And those women need support as well – it’s not just about existing postnatal care, which is absolutely dire.”

Many of these women are now “coping with PTSD and the mental health implications of that,” she added.

Bates was speaking on a panel about the day’s headlines, alongside Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting and author Peter Pomerantsev, chaired by The Independent editor-in-chief Geordie Greig.

When asked what he would do to make women feel safer giving birth on the NHS under a Labour government, Streeting said: “We’ve got to deal with the understaffing, and train thousands more midwives to deal with that.”

“I’m shocked at the way women are basically ignored in terms of postnatal care. It’s all about the baby – important, but no one asks the mothers about their health, and particularly the injuries they suffer,” he said, adding that he had had “conversations with some of my friends that I never imagined I’d have, about some of the injuries they sustained during childbirth”.

He also said that he was “absolutely determined to make sure that when it comes to clinical trials and medical research, that we get parity of esteem and representation for women in medical research. It can’t all be about the boys.”

He agreed with Bates that the NHS was not “designed with women in mind”, stating that otherwise “they would not be waiting over eight years for a diagnosis on a common condition like endometriosis”.

Hay Festival runs until 2 June; hayfestival.com