Is a masculine wellness agenda failing women?

In the first of a new series, guest columnist Aradhana Khowala, chair of the global advisory board, Red Sea Global development company and founder of Aptamind Partners, asks us to think more deeply about inequality in wellness

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, in 300BC described the female body as the inverse of the male body with its genitalia “turned outside in”. Fast-forward to 2023, and health and wellness is still a man’s world. Even though the sector has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years, the march forward has been replete with systematic negligence, severe underfunding of women’s health problems and a patriarchal provision of solutions.

All our methods for evaluating, diagnosing and treating disease are based on research performed on male cells, animals and bodies. Hence even as women live longer today than men in many parts of the world, they spend more of their lives in worse health.

Throughout history, a woman’s ability to reproduce has been the focal point of all research and that meant most of the attention was focused on the uterus, which commanded the only societal and biological respect for a woman. Hence women’s wellness evolved and revolved around that one key differentiator in the middle of the body and the rest was presumed and assumed to be the same.

Being a woman is bad for your health

For decades, we’ve known that women differ from men in the prevalence and symptoms of health conditions, and how those variations impact everything from what drugs are prescribed to how routine tests are performed, how pain is assessed and treated, and how systemic disease is diagnosed. Yet, women are under-represented in clinical and pharmaceutical research trials, and most trials do not account for sex differences as a variable.

In fact, some populations of women – such as pregnant mothers from different races and ethnicities, and the elderly – are even less represented and have measurably poorer outcomes. Doctors sometimes don’t even have the tools necessary to diagnose female expressions of common health conditions.

Excluding half the population from clinical trials and drug testing is not only a bad idea but also a dangerous one. This is how the gender gap manifests and being a woman becomes detrimental for your health.

A trillion-dollar market

This paradox also manifests itself in the wellness industry just the same. Women’s health is a $1 trillion (£850 million) market; women run and make key strategic decisions at wellness centres (84% of all spa managers in US are women); and women are the key target segment and decision-makers who drive demand (the majority of spa-goers and wellness users are women and 94% of the health and wellness decisions for their families are made by women).

Yet, women have historically and systemically been excluded from wellness research and innovation, and wellness centres still don’t tap into the opportunity to provide a holistic approach and management of women’s health.

Currently, many wellness centres fail to diversify their services beyond massages and facials and do not respond in an integrated way to the needs of women.

Even the so-called signature treatments being offered are developed as pampering experiences rather than as essential healthcare approaches that aim to find the real cause of our health problems.

The data demands a shift in thinking

Holistic wellness is now beginning to have a measurable impact on companies across every industry.

The health and mental crisis caused by the pandemic and fast-paced lifestyles has opened a great opportunity for the industry to transform quickly and start catering to the more complex needs of the most important wellness segment.

Unlike the baby boomers were, millennials or Gen Z aren’t keen on settling for superficial wellness treatments and accepting living with undiagnosed conditions. They embrace holistic health as a new mantra and require a complete reshuffle of the wellness offering.

Expert Contributor

Aradhana Khowala’s career in luxury hospitality, travel and tourism has spanned more than two decades, five continents and 75 countries. She is CEO of the consultancy Aptamind Partners and says her mission is to “continue to evangelise for using tourism as a force for good and to turbocharge the mission for gender equality as there is a significant link between the two”. Khowala currently serves as chair of the group advisory board of Red Sea Global in Saudi Arabia, and is a board member of Elaf Group, the leisure arm of a sustainable listed holding company SEDCO.

www.aptamind.com