Framing the Invisible: How Austria’s Women’s Health Strategy Triggered Reports and Closed Data Gaps

Abstract

Women’s health remains strikingly underrepresented in public health systems worldwide. Core issues such as mental health, body image, gender-based violence, menstruation, menopause, contraception, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) have long been framed as private, marginal, or non-medical and therefore excluded from systematic data collection and policy agendas. This structural invisibility perpetuates inequities in healthcare access, quality, and outcomes for more than half of the population. In response, Austria launched its Women’s Health Strategy in 2018, with the explicit aim of embedding gender equity into health governance, research, and planning. A central objective was to close persistent gender data gaps and to legitimize women’s health topics that had previously remained outside formal public health frameworks. The strategy served as a catalyst for a series of landmark publications: the Women’s Health Report (2022), followed by the Menstrual Health Report (2024), the Contraception Report (2024), and a comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Report (2025). Together, these reports generated high-quality, gender-specific evidence, transformed public discourse, and brought historically neglected aspects of women’s health into the policy mainstream. Beyond filling data gaps, the strategy changed how institutions engage with women’s health. Austria’s experience demonstrates that strategic framing can make the invisible visible. Embedding women’s health into public health governance is not only feasible, but also scalable and transferable. The Austrian model offers learnings for advancing gender-equitable in public health policy worldwide.