Effective Measures to Improve Women’s Health in India

Women’s health in India is shaped by a complex web of biology, social position, economic standing, and access to services. While maternal mortality has declined and institutional deliveries have risen, large gaps remain – especially for adolescent girls, elderly women, and those living in rural and tribal areas. Improving women’s health is not just about building more hospitals. It requires expanding what we mean by “women’s health,” ensuring quality care reaches every village, and giving women the knowledge and confidence to claim it as a right. Let’s look at the three pillars that can drive this change.

Expanding healthcare services beyond reproduction 🔗

For decades, women’s health programs in India have focused largely on pregnancy and childbirth. While maternal care is vital, women have health needs at every stage of life – from menstruation in adolescence to menopause, mental health concerns, non-communicable diseases, and care in old age. A truly responsive health system must broaden its scope.

Moving past the “mother and child” lens 🔗

Reproductive health programs have traditionally targeted married women in the 15-49 age group. But this narrow window leaves out adolescent girls, unmarried women, and women past their reproductive years. Expanding services means offering routine cervical and breast cancer screening, mental health counselling, cardiovascular care, osteoporosis management, and menopause support. The Comprehensive Primary Health Care delivered through Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres is a step in this direction, since these centres are designed to provide preventive, promotive, curative, palliative, and rehabilitative services close to the community.

Adolescent and menstrual health 🔗

Adolescence is a foundational stage that has long been ignored in public health. The Scheme for Promotion of Menstrual Hygiene under the National Health Mission provides subsidised sanitary napkins to girls aged 10-19 through ASHA workers, and Janaushadhi Kendras now sell biodegradable pads at one rupee each. Beyond products, schools and community programs must include sessions on nutrition, anaemia prevention, body literacy, and consent.

Mental health and non-communicable diseases 🔗

Indian women carry a disproportionate burden of depression, anxiety, and domestic-violence-related trauma, yet mental health remains under-resourced. Similarly, conditions like diabetes, hypertension, thyroid disorders, and breast cancer often go undiagnosed because routine screening is missing from primary care visits. Adding these services to the standard package at sub-centres and PHCs would catch problems early, when treatment is cheaper and more effective.

Ensuring access to quality care 🔗

Building a clinic is not the same as providing care. A woman may travel ten kilometres to a primary health centre only to find no doctor, no medicines, or a provider who treats her dismissively. Access must be measured not just in distance, but in availability, affordability, acceptability, and quality.

Closing the rural-urban divide 🔗

About 70% of India’s population lives in rural areas, and rural women face the steepest barriers to healthcare. A 2025 analysis based on the National Family Health Survey found that the proportion of women reporting all four major problems in accessing healthcare – affordability, proximity, permission, and support – fell from 27.15% in 2016 to 23.19% in 2021, but rural women still face significantly more problems than urban women, with proximity and affordability being the major hurdles. Programs like the National Mobile Medical Units, which bring primary care to remote and underserved areas, and the expansion of Health and Wellness Centres are practical ways to shrink this gap.

Workforce: doctors, nurses, and ASHAs 🔗

Quality care depends on people. Rural facilities often face chronic shortages of obstetricians, anaesthetists, and even general physicians. Retention requires more than salaries – it needs housing, child education support, career progression, and security. Frontline workers like ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activists) and ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) carry the system on their shoulders, yet are often underpaid and over-burdened. Strengthening their training, providing fair honoraria, and giving them functional equipment is one of the most cost-effective investments a state can make.

Respectful maternity care 🔗

Quality also means dignity. The Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan (SUMAN) initiative promises assured, dignified, respectful, and quality healthcare at no cost, with zero tolerance for denial of services to any pregnant woman or newborn at public facilities. Complementing this, the LaQshya programme aims to improve quality of care in labour rooms and maternity operation theatres at government medical colleges, district hospitals, and high-caseload community health centres. The challenge now is implementation – ensuring these promises translate into real experiences for women at the village level.

Financial protection 🔗

Out-of-pocket spending pushes millions of Indian families into poverty every year, and women are often the first to delay or skip care to save money for others in the household. Cash-transfer schemes like Janani Suraksha Yojana incentivise institutional delivery, while Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram entitles every pregnant woman to free delivery – including caesarean section – drugs, diagnostics, diet, and transport at public facilities. Expanding Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY coverage to include more outpatient services for women would further reduce the financial pressure of staying healthy.

Empowering women for better health 🔗

Even the best clinic cannot help a woman who is not allowed to visit it, does not know it exists, or has no money in her own hands. Empowerment – the ability to make informed decisions and demand accountability – is the third and perhaps most decisive pillar.

Education and economic independence 🔗

Education is a powerful determinant of health. Educated women marry later, have fewer and healthier children, seek antenatal care earlier, and are more likely to ensure their daughters are immunised. Economic independence adds the resources to act on this knowledge. A study using NFHS-5 data found that married women’s participation in household decisions on their own healthcare rose, and the Women’s Empowerment Index varied widely across states – with Goa, Sikkim, and Himachal Pradesh leading and several southern and eastern states lagging – suggesting that empowerment and health outcomes move together.

Health literacy and information 🔗

Knowing what is normal, what is a warning sign, and where to go is half the battle. Community-based health education through ASHAs, school programs, anganwadi centres, and Self-Help Groups (SHGs) can dramatically increase the timely use of services. A scoping review in the journal Global Public Health found that mobile-phone calls, SMS reminders, interactive voice response systems, and audio-visual aids – often delivered by frontline health workers – have helped rural Indian women learn about and access healthcare services. Digital tools, used carefully and in local languages, can bridge information gaps that printed posters never could.

Self-Help Groups and collective voice 🔗

Self-Help Groups have emerged as one of India’s most effective platforms for women’s empowerment. Beyond savings and microcredit, they create space for discussion of health practices, nutrition, vaccination, and rights. When women act collectively, they can also hold the system accountable. Social accountability projects – for example, those documented in Uttar Pradesh where grassroots forums of low-caste, Muslim, and tribal women worked to reduce informal payments demanded by health providers – show that organised women can shift the behaviour of even resistant local health systems.

Accountability mechanisms 🔗

Community-based monitoring, citizen charters at health facilities, grievance redressal helplines, and Mahila Arogya Samitis (women’s health committees) are tools through which women can demand the care they are entitled to. For these mechanisms to work, women need information about their rights, fearless platforms to raise complaints, and assurance that complaints will lead to action – not retaliation.

Addressing the social determinants 🔗

Women’s health does not begin at the clinic door. Clean water, sanitation, smoke-free kitchens, safe transport, freedom from violence, and adequate nutrition all shape health outcomes long before any disease appears.

Water, sanitation, and clean fuel 🔗

The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Jal Jeevan Mission, and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana have improved sanitation, household water connections, and access to LPG. Over 11.8 crore household toilets have been built and roughly 15.6 crore rural households have received tap-water connections, reducing women’s time poverty and exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass fuels. These are health interventions in disguise, with effects on respiratory illness, infections, and even safety.

Nutrition 🔗

Anaemia remains stubbornly high among Indian women and girls. Programmes like POSHAN Abhiyaan, the iron and folic acid supplementation under the Anaemia Mukt Bharat strategy, and supplementary nutrition through anganwadis address this directly. Pairing supplementation with dietary education at the household level is essential, since food choices are often shaped by family hierarchies that put women last.

Freedom from violence 🔗

Gender-based violence is both a health issue and a barrier to seeking healthcare. One-Stop Centres (Sakhi centres), the 181 women’s helpline, and protections under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act provide formal support. Training healthcare providers to identify and respond to violence sensitively – without judgement and with confidentiality – is a measure that costs little but saves lives.

Putting it all together 🔗

No single scheme can fix women’s health. The path forward is to weave together broader services across the life course, better quality and access especially in rural areas, and genuine empowerment that lets women decide, demand, and deliver feedback. Government schemes provide the scaffolding, but real change happens when frontline workers are supported, communities are informed, and women are treated as partners rather than recipients of welfare.

What do you think? Which of the three pillars – expanding services, ensuring quality access, or empowering women – would have the biggest impact in your own town or village, and why? And how can young people, including college students, play a role in pushing for change in women’s health locally?

References

1. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1946710
2. https://ddnews.gov.in/en/centre-steps-up-measures-to-improve-health-and-well-being-of-women/
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11059574/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12888451/
5. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1884185&reg=3&lang=2
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11346798/
7. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17441692.2024.2318240
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6560750/