While everyone has the right to age well, women face unique challenges to aging with optimal health and economic security.  Women often make less money than men; they often work part time, take time away from work to care for children and aging parents, save less money, work in fields with fewer employer-sponsored retirement benefits, have more chronic diseases with their related costs, and feel less comfortable discussing finances.

The National Council on Aging (NCOA, https://www.ncoa.org/  ) founded in 1950, is a Washington, D.C.-based American nonprofit that aims to improve the health and economic security of older adults. NCOA advocates for older Americans, promoting job security, access to benefits, healthcare, and independent living. NCOA fields surveys and analyzes the latest data to understand the shifting needs of older adults, especially those who are most at risk of health and financial insecurity. Here is some of their latest research reports and findings on women's health care.

Women and health care access

• Nearly one in five women have no health care provider.
• Overall, 10% of women said they didn’t see a doctor because of the costs. Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native women are most likely to say they didn’t see a doctor due to costs and white women are the least likely.
• In 2021, 3 out of 4 women age 65+ with Medicare had a mammogram in the past 2 years. Screening rates were highest (82%) among Black women and lowest (59%) among American Indian/Alaska Native women.
• Cardiovascular disease affects 60 million American women and is the leading cause of death, but only a little over half (56%) of women recognize it as such.
• Black women are 60% more likely to have high blood pressure than white women, which greatly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Discrimination against women in health care

• Nearly half of older Black women said the health care system treats people differently based on their race or ethnicity—nearly one-third of white and Latina women agreed.
• More than half of all women said that they believe gender discrimination is a serious problem, compared to one-third of men. One in five women said that a health care provider ignored or dismissed their symptoms, compared with 14% of men. Nearly one in five women said they have been treated differently because of their gender, compared to one in 20 men.
• In a study about pain relief in hospital emergency departments, although men and women had similar pain scores, only 38% of women received any pain relief medication compared to 47% of men.

The exclusion of women in medical research and clinical trials

• Medical schools and medical research consider a 154-pound, white male the average patient—this means that a white man’s biology has been guiding medicine and treatment options.
• Women were excluded from clinical trials for years to protect them and their fetuses from the side effects. While Congress mandated including women in clinical research beginning in 1993, a recent Harvard Medical School study found that as of 2019, women were still substantially underrepresented in clinical trials for leading diseases.

Women in work and retirement

• Roughly one-third of all women and half (49%) of low-income women say their retirement income or savings will not be enough to pay their monthly bills.
• Half of all women, and 7 in 10 low-income women were not confident in being able to plan and save for retirement.
• In 2024, the uncontrolled gender pay gap was $0.83 for every $1 that men made.
• Women receive Social Security benefits that are, on average, 80% of the amount that men receive.
• Women are more likely to work part-time jobs and therefore less likely to have an employer-sponsored retirement plan; approximately 43.5% of U.S. working age women have contributed to a retirement plan.

Women as caregivers

• Roughly a quarter of women age 55+ provide some form of unpaid caregiving each day, which over the course of a year equates to five weeks of full-time unpaid work.
• Over 2.3 million minor children are being raised by single grandmothers, and 1 in 5 grandmothers raising grandchildren are doing so while living in poverty.
• Caregiving often impedes women’s ability to retain full-time employment. A 2023 study from AARP found that 27% of working caregivers reduced their hours and 16% stopped working entirely for a period of time to focus on their caregiving responsibilities.
• One quarter of caregivers have less than $1,000 in savings, and caregivers are more likely to say that debt and poor health are problems for them.