Women’s right to health is a fundamental human right. It includes the right to access prevention, treatment, and recovery services that are safe, equitable, and responsive to their realities.

Yet across the world, women continue to face profound barriers when seeking support for substance use and mental health. The most recent global data show that only 1 in 18 women with substance use disorders access treatment services, compared to 1 in 7 men. This widening treatment gap is not simply a health system failure: it is a gender equality issue. When women cannot access care, their rights are not being realised.

Achieving Rights. Justice. Action. means recognising that women’s mental health, substance use, and reproductive health are deeply interconnected. Women are disproportionately exposed to risk factors such as trauma, violence, stigma, and social disadvantage. These experiences can shape pathways into substance use and make seeking help even more difficult.

At the same time, services are often not designed with women’s needs in mind. Fear of stigma, loss of child custody, lack of childcare, unsafe treatment environments, and gender-insensitive care can all prevent women from accessing the support they need. When prevention and treatment systems fail to respond to these realities, women are left navigating recovery without the protection, dignity, and support they deserve.

The consequences extend far beyond the individual. Women are often central to family and community wellbeing. When women are unable to access care, the impact can ripple across generations, affecting maternal health, child development, and family stability.

Closing the treatment gap is therefore not only a health priority; it is essential to achieving gender equality and Sustainable Development Goal 5.

This International Women’s Day, action is needed.

We must expand gender-responsive prevention and treatment services, ensure that care environments are safe and trauma-informed, and remove the structural barriers that prevent women from accessing support. Women’s voices and lived experiences must be at the centre of service design and policy decisions.

Justice means recognising the gap.
Rights mean ensuring women can access care without stigma or fear.
Action means building systems that truly respond to women’s realities.

Because when women receive the care and support they need, families, communities, and future generations are stronger.