Closing the Gap in Women’s Health

This International Women’s Day, I would like to address a gap that quietly shapes women’s health across the lifespan. It may not feel urgent amid everything women carry each day, but the data documenting women’s disproportionate burden of chronic, cognitive, and inflammatory conditions are increasingly difficult to ignore.

As a 30-year nutritional ingredient professional, I have recently returned to the omega-3 space. Having worked with early market leaders in omega-3 innovation, including DSM, Martek, and Nature’s Crops, I witnessed the evolution of omega-3 science firsthand. Omega-3s were where my career began and where I deliberately returned. As someone who also writes about gender balance, I could not ignore how the data on women’s health and women’s economic outcomes correlate.

Women live longer than men, yet we often spend more of those additional years in poor health. We earn less, invest less, retire with fewer assets, and shoulder the majority of unpaid caregiving responsibilities. These outcomes are not isolated. They are systemic and rooted in long-standing blind spots across research, policy, and clinical practice.

From a biological standpoint, women navigate complex hormonal transitions including menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, and menopause. These transitions meaningfully influence cardiovascular, cognitive, and immune health. For decades, women of childbearing age were excluded from clinical research under FDA guidance intended to protect pregnancy. This created a multi-decade data gap that continues to shape medical and public health recommendations. Even today, nutrition guidance is rarely stratified by sex, despite evidence that women metabolize fats, regulate inflammation, and respond to nutrients differently than men.

When we examine women’s health through the lens of essential nutrition, particularly long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, the opportunity for meaningful intervention becomes clearer. Population-based research suggests that women often consume less EPA and DHA than men, highlighting a persistent omega-3 intake gap among women, particularly those of childbearing age, whose DHA intake remains well below recommended levels (Papanikolaou et al., 2014;Jensen, 2006). This omega-3 shortfall exists alongside inadequacies in other critical nutrients, including vitamin D, iron, calcium, folate, and magnesium. The pattern is consistent.Women are not simply under-researched. They are frequently under-nourished.

Omega-3 fatty acids, particularly EPA and DHA, support women’s cardiovascular, cognitive, inflammatory, and hormonal health across the lifespan. Because the body cannot efficiently produce them, they must come from the diet, making them essential (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements).

Women face elevated lifetime risks in heart and brain health (AHA; Alzheimer’s Association; NIH ORWH), and omega-3s are among the most studied nutrients in these areas. Adequate intake is particularly important during pregnancy and postpartum and may support mood across hormonal transitions.

At the same time, women earn approximately 82% of what men earn, perform nearly twice as many unpaid caregiving hours, are far less likely to reach the C-suite, and receive only a small fraction of venture capital funding.By retirement age, many women face the dual burden of health challenges and financial constraint.

These factors do not simply coexist. They compound.Financial stress influences health risk. Caregiver strain accelerates biological aging. Reduced access to preventive care shapes long-term outcomes. Health equity and economic equity are intertwined, and nutrition remains one of the most scalable and under-leveraged tools available to influence both.

This International Women’s Day, let us do more than acknowledge the gaps in women’s health. Let us define them clearly and prioritize them strategically.When women are well nourished and scientifically supported, our cognitive capacity strengthens, our leadership expands, and our long-term resilience compounds.As leaders in this industry, we have both the expertise and the platform to raise the standard for how women’s health is researched, formulated, and advanced. That is not simply an opportunity. It is a responsibility.