The invisible issue. That’s what Melinda French Gates called ‘menopause’ when she recently announced her increased investment in women’s health, with a focus on this significant biological change affecting half the world’s population.
She is right. This is why fewer than one-third of medical programs in most countries, including the US, teach menopause in core curricula. It’s why, although 25 percent of menopausal women experience severe symptoms, many are dismissed or not offered treatment. And it’s why, exactly one year ago, I lost my mother to a reproductive cancer that she developed after menopause.
Women’s health is chronically underfunded, under-researched, and misunderstood – receiving just 2% of private healthcare funds globally. In fact, most clinical trials were not required to include women until a ruling change in 1993. Consequently, the male body has been treated as the default in medical research, despite substantial physical and biological differences between men and women.
This begs the question: Is underinvestment the root cause or just a symptom of our societal mindsets around womanhood and, particularly, aging women?
A recent viral headline highlighted that blockbuster films were more likely to feature an actor named ‘Chris’ or a talking animal than a woman over 60. So, perhaps it is not just that issues like menopause are invisible, but actually that older women themselves are rendered irrelevant in our society.
Ironically, menopause is actually preparing women to become natural leaders in our communities. This shift in estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone can mark the onset of a woman’s prime, associated with peak emotional intelligence, decisive leadership, and elevated resilience. Scientists call this the ‘Grandmother effect’.
Unfortunately, my beautiful mother did not live long enough to become a grandmother.
She died at the age of 66 from Stage 1 reproductive cancer in just 21 months because women’s health has never been given the priority, investment, or protection it deserves.
She was a healthy, active woman: she had no issues with blood sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol and no history of cancer, autoimmune, or dementia. She never smoked or had a sip of alcohol in her life. She was proactive about her health and visited the doctor regularly. She managed two accounting firms, while raising two children, and juggling most of the domestic responsibilities in our household.
After menopause, she developed a skin condition called lichen sclerosus, which has no known cause, prevention, or cure, but often occurs in postmenopausal women. For nearly a decade, doctors prescribed topical medications to manage her symptoms.
Not once did they mention the “C-word.”
In 2023, she started experiencing unbearable pain and discomfort. Finally, a doctor recommended a biopsy. It came back malignant. They found a rare form of cancer and recommended surgical removal.
Her surgery in November 2023 was initially deemed successful. Just a few months later, to the oncologist’s surprise, the cancer reappeared. The following year consisted of every treatment in the book – targeted radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and another two unsuccessful surgeries – leaving my mother exhausted. By November 2024, she was admitted into palliative care. After a 222-day stay in the hospital, she passed away on June 15th, 2025.
This accelerated trajectory – from an incurable, seemingly harmless skin condition to a rare, underresearched, and ultimately fatal reproductive cancer – points to a systemic failure, not just for my mother, but for so many postmenopausal women.
How long will we wait to prioritize women’s reproductive health and the kind of research that could have saved the life of my mother and millions of other women? And, how can we justify asking women to carry the risks and burdens of their female reproductive capacity alone, when it is the very reason each one of us is here today?
Since my mother’s passing, my family and I are trying to do our part. We’ve raised more than $100,000 in donations for research around underfunded areas such as rare women’s cancers, lichen sclerosus, and menopause. We are encouraged to learn that funders like Melinda French Gates are also starting to invest in women’s midlife and menopause. Similar investments have historically driven immense progress in menstrual health and maternal health.
But funding alone is not enough, we need a fundamental shift in our societal mindsets.
My mother’s illness literally vanished her from my life, but I refuse to let her story remain invisible.
Her passing was the ultimate consequence of underfunding women’s health. When we fail to protect and invest in female biology and the reproductive systems that create and sustain life, we not only penalize mothers, we weaken the very foundation of our society.
Think about your own mothers and grandmothers, who give us life, raise us, and nurture us – do they deserve to disappear into irrelevance? These wise women are being biologically primed to lead our society, let’s not allow them to become invisible.
About the Author: Sahar Jamal is a Public Voices Fellow, a partnership of Acumen and The OpEd Project. She is also the Founder & CEO of Maziwa Breastfeeding in Kenya and her recent TEDxNairobi Talk highlights How society thrives when we elevate the Alchemy of Motherhood.
