Let’s say there is a disease affecting 10% of the population, leaving people aged 15 to 55 in severe pain 2–3 days EVERY single month. Now let’s say there’s another condition, also affecting about 10% of the population, mostly impacting sexual performance in people over 50 years old. Purely hypothetically, which one would you expect science, medicine, and funding to prioritise fixing first?
The severe pain, you think? Meh, guess again and keep reading.
We work. We pay taxes. We run households. We give birth. We recover from it (often while taking care of a house, answering emails, changing diapers, and pretending sleep is optional). We care for children, elderly parents, partners, and sometimes entire communities’ emotional status. And yet, when you zoom out into the world of science, medicine, and leadership, there’s a strange imbalance in what gets studied, funded, published, and prioritised when it comes to women’s health and women’s wellbeing overall.
If you look at how society manages attention, money, and trust, you start noticing a pattern. Women are very present in the body of every system, but often not in its decision-making brain:
• In healthcare: more nurses, midwives, and general practitioners in many countries are women, but department heads in hospitals are still mostly men
• In education: more teachers, especially in early and secondary schooling, are women, but school principals are still disproportionately men
• In science, women outnumber men in higher education, and yet only 27 women in more than 120 years have been awarded the Nobel Prize in science (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine), compared with 635 men!
Political and business management fields also remain heavily male-dominated; in other words, the “final voice” always sits with men. It’s like having a full orchestra where most of the musicians are women, but the conductor is still, more often than not, a man (on that note, kudos to Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a world-famous female conductor, one of the first women to hold top-tier positions at major international orchestras).
And it might look kind of logical – if men are trusted with higher positions and more important decisions everywhere, we, as a society, naturally care more about their wellbeing. Now, on the other hand, how can women ever achieve the same level of social recognition if, for example, severe chronic pain that around 200 million women globally experience a few days every month is of a lesser priority than male erectile dysfunction? I think it’s a very vocal example, so let’s look a bit deeper into it, in case you ever need an argument to support feminism.
Erectile dysfunction vs endometriosis: what the research actually shows
Erectile Dysfunction (ED)
Erectile dysfunction is the inability to get or maintain an erection long enough to have sexual intercourse. It is also called impotence, affecting around 200+ million men globally. ED is an age-progressive condition, with around 70% of diagnosed cases being over 70 years old.
Erectile dysfunction is one of the most heavily studied conditions in male sexual medicine with ~8,000–8,800+ publications, thousands of additional clinical and experimental studies across urology, cardiology, endocrinology, and pharmacology. ED is a multi-industry research ecosystem – structured, clinically coordinated, and heavily funded, with easy diagnostics and clear therapeutic structure.
Endometriosis
Endometriosis is a chronic disease common to women, with symptoms that include severe pain during menstruation; heavy menstrual bleeding; chronic pelvic pain (pain that does not go away when the menstrual cycle ends); infertility; and abdominal bloating and nausea.
Endometriosis is also a major global condition, affecting 200+ million women globally throughout their entire lives, and yet diagnosing this disease takes, on average, 10 years! We can find only ~5,000 studies, the key issue behind it is research fragmentation: no structure, consistency, and, of course, not enough funding.
Erectile dysfunction and endometriosis affect roughly the same amount of the population, and here is where the imbalance becomes socially visible: conditions affecting men’s sexual function have historically received highly structured research attention, followed by fast translation into treatment options, like well known viagra pills, supported by other inovative pharmaceutical incentives. While conditions affecting women’s health, like endometriosis, often face delayed diagnostic solutions, inconsistent treatment standards, and fragmented research funding. This is not because women’s health is “less important.” It is because research attention follows systems of value, priorities, funding, and leadership, not human need.
Why does this example matter?
Because this doesn’t stay in papers or labs. It moves through our lives: women waiting years for diagnosis because symptoms are scattered across different medical specialties; pain being normalised instead of investigated; women’s complaints often not being taken seriously; and despite all the invisible labor women do for their families, workplaces, and societies, they have to adjust their health conditions (periods, pregnancy, menopause, and many others) to common standards and carry on through their lives without causing any inconvenience to others.
We can debate research gaps, competencies, and statistics all day long, but the real priorities of society are still very simple and very patriarchal.
When I find difficulties in understanding someone’s behaviour, I often try to imagine them as little kids; it somehow explains things in a very primitive and clear way. So now imagine that man who appoints other men into high positions, rejecting a competent woman, or grants funding to male-benefiting health research while disapproving equally good but female-focused projects. This man doesn’t come from some anti-feminist retreat; they all come from their childhood and their families. As children, they absorbed what they repeatedly saw, what was rewarded, and what was left unquestioned.
So if we ever want any of it to change, we don’t just need louder advocacy. We need to change something before people are grown enough to make these important calls. We need to change how we raise our children: both girls and boys.
Raising girls: not through “you can do it all” lessons, but through real-life awarrenes
A lot of modern parenting advice tells mothers to “raise strong girls.” That sounds strong, but is incomplete, because strength alone doesn’t fix systems that are unevenly designed. Maybe instead of “you can do anything,” we could say “you will be expected to do everything, so learn to prioritise and delegate.”
Girls already start adulthood having many expectations: be successful, but not intimidating; be kind, but not weak; be ambitious, but not “too much”; be available, but also independent. So instead of more encouragement, they would benefit more from:
Practical and realistic skills and approaches.
Help them to separate what do I want to do from what am I being socially pressured into; what boundaries protect me and how to introduce them; where do I negotiate, and where do I simply refuse? These skills create something more powerful than false strength, it’s clarity.
Focus less on body positivity and more on the agency of their own bodies.
This is especially important in healthcare and also intimacy contexts where women’s symptoms or senses are still more likely to be minimised or psychologised. So instead of paying so much attention to their looks, make sure they are able to take agency over their own body, understanding that: your discomfort is information, not an inconvenience to someone; medical concerns deserve second opinions if dismissed; silence is not politeness when something feels wrong; you don’t have to explain your body or your senses to anyone – what you feel is yours and should be respected.
Taking endometriosis as a continued example, many young women are convinced that the pain they feel is natural or are told they are overly sensitive, since period cramps just a normal condition, without properly explaining that a condition that doesn’t allow you to continue your normal life and appears as severe pain every month is not something to live with, but something to be treated.
Now here’s the uncomfortable truth: gender equality progress fails not because girls are not strong enough to push it through, but because boys are not prepared to equally share responsibilities in real-life situations. So focusing only on girls will take us nowhere.
Raising boys who think beyond helping women
We are not raising two different species for two separate environments; we are raising boys and girls whose collaboration is essential for everyone’s wellbeing. So our goal is not “raise ethically polite boys who tolerate feminism.” But it is to raise boys who understand equality in action, not ideologically, and we should start as early as we can by:
Normalising care as masculine competence, not feminine territory.
We, as parents, still very often assign empathy as a feminine skill and teach that girls should care while boys achieve, so no wonder that later in life men only know how to support activities, conditions, and other members of society if they are like them – men.
To break that pattern early boys should be responsible for caregiving tasks without extra praise or shaming (“boys don’t have to know much about cooking, to boil an egg should be enough” or “look at you, you know how to clean dishes!”). They should learn cooking, cleaning, and emotional check-ins as default life skills, not in case they need to help weaker, aka – women. They should see care not as “helping women,” but as normal human adulthood. Many times I’ve heard men say that they help their wives with the baby, as if that baby is not theirs, instead of saying that they have tasks together.
To understand women and our effort, they need to turn on empathy and try to feel what one feels. This sounds simple, but it can change entire perspectives and behaviour.
Teach boys emotional labour as real labour (not invisible background noise).
One of the biggest hidden inequalities is not just income or leadership, it’s emotional load – and the comfortable myth that women are doing it because they enjoy it. Teach boys how to share the invisible tasks: to remember, plan, and take care of birthdays and similar events in the family; to track everyone’s feelings, schedules, and conflicts; to smooth tension when something goes wrong; to notice when someone is struggling and be there for them. This work is not always “natural femininity.” It is something that often just needs to be done.
If boys grow up understanding emotional work as visible, they are far less likely to unconsciously take it for granted later in life.
Make inequality visible early, without turning it into blame.
This is delicate because the goal is not to raise boys feeling guilty. It is to raise boys who notice patterns in the same way that girls do. So boys should grow up seeing women leading teams without surprise. Stop saying: “female doctor,” “woman engineer,” “male nurse,” and say: doctor, engineer, nurse. Because the words you use quietly decide what feels “normal.”
Many boys are taught respect as behaviour: don’t interrupt; be polite; help girls first. But equality needs deeper understanding that women are not smaller beings to be helped – they are equals, without surprises, without exceptions, without pettiness. When boys can see achievements or tasks as not gender related, they become far less resistant to changes later.
Teach boys respect for women’s bodies as they are, not as they are convenient for men.
Normalise women’s bodies and everything that they are and do. To understand their classmates, colleagues, and partners, boys first have to understand their mothers and sisters first. Speaking to a boy about menstruation (in an age-appropriate manner) is not shameful, it’s educational. Boys who know that their mom is having menstrual cramps and that’s why she’s in pain will learn empathy and find ways to help her. Even putting a blanket on her or offering chocolate and a cup of chamomile tea will give them a sense of usefulness and a way to show love in action.
Boys should understand that women’s bodies are not commentary topics. Their curves, the clothes they wear, and anything of that sort shouldn’t be something men offer their opinion on as if women’s whole purpose is to please the male eye. Same as our health conditions, like PMS, pregnancy, and menopause, are not insta jokes or exaggerations. They are something we don’t choose to have; they come with our nature, and unfortunately often are not pleasant to handle. It’s not that we like it – we just are like this.
Teach boys to respect us not only when we are as strong as men, but always. The real goal is symmetry between genders, not trying to be something we are not, but being undeniably equal in one another’s existence.
Why parenting matters more than feministic speeches and policy changes
Because culture does not change in the offices of ministers or the headquarters of major institutions. It changes at the dinner table, in bedtime conversations, and in what we, parents say and repeat to our kids when no one is officially listening. Ministers and high-ranking managers are not born with default beliefs; those defaults are shaped by their parents, often without them even realising it.
We often talk about “breaking the glass ceiling.” But ceilings don’t matter if there are no floors (the baseline), and the floors we build at home: naturally, daily, without noticing. And we, as parents, whether we like it or not, are often the first architects of those floors.
A boy who grows up seeing women as natural equals doesn’t need persuasion later. A girl who grows up understanding her own agency and value doesn’t need to do twice as much to receive recognition or stay in pain for ten years to receive help.
And a society that raises both equally, with equal encouragement, doesn’t need new laws and quotas to correct itself, it becomes self-correcting.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that men and women are exactly the same. We’re not, physically or emotionally, and in day-to-day life: we can give birth, and men can fight an enemy. That’s fine, we all understand that one doesn’t exist without the other. What I’m suggesting is that parents, not politicians, are the real front line in creating change for our children, so they can begin correcting how unevenly we, and many generations before us, have designed our society.
