Featured in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, The Nordic Charter for Women’s Health 2040 is a strategic framework designed to transform women’s health from a niche concern into a cornerstone of Nordic social and economic resilience. Resulting from the collective insight of over 130 contributors across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, gathering at Danish Parliament September 8th 2025, this document moves beyond aspiration to outline a concrete infrastructure for systemic change.

This Charter embodies the collective insight, ambition, and commitment to shaping a Nordic future where women’s health is systemic, equitable, and inclusive.

Across the Nordics, clear signs of change show a real opening for progress in women’s health. Activity is already rising, across research, clinics, innovation, and policy, indicating a need for coordination to trigger potential synergy. Women’s health now represents a defining choice for the region: the current reality of lower healthy life expectancy, years-long diagnostic delays, and research that overlooks female physiology is neither inevitable nor acceptable.

Women in the Nordic region, as elsewhere, live longer but spend significantly more years in poor health than men; globally, women spend about 25% more of their lives in poor health than men. Yet only around 5% of global health R&D funding is dedicated to women’s health, and just 1% to non oncology women specific conditions. In a nationwide study of 6.9 million people, women were diagnosed about four years later than men across 770 non sex specific diseases. Together, these gaps show how limited our understanding of women’s biology and health still is.