At the conference ‘The big, small difference – Why gender is important in cardiology: knowledge strengthens women’s hearts’, organised by Regina Steringer-Mascherbauer und Martin Martinek for the hospital of the Elisabethinen order in Linz, our Scientific Director and Professor of Fundamental and Human Rights, Michael Lysander Fremuth, talked about human rights and gender medicine. He focused in particular on the right to access to effective healthcare and the principle of equality, and then presented individual examples of where further improvements are needed. As such, women are already disadvantaged internationally in terms of access to medical care due to socio-economic and cultural factors. The principle of equality and the prohibition of discrimination require that unequal things be treated unequally. This requires, in particular, the recognition of gender-specific differences or gender-exclusive characteristics in the development of therapeutics, diagnosis and treatment of women. For a long time, endometriosis, for example, a very painful disease resulting from the proliferation and spreading of the endometrium outside the uterine cavity, which affects 6 to 10 % of women, remained unresearched and untreated. Heart attacks are detected less frequently in women due to the different symptoms and even medications for women are sometimes primarily researched on men. Just as children are not simply small adults, women are not simply people with different sexual characteristics to men, who have long been the sole benchmark in medical research. Medicine must fully recognise women in their independence and individuality.

The special opportunities and challenges associated with the use of artificial intelligence in medicine were also addressed. In conclusion, Fremuth emphasised that men also benefit from gender-sensitive medicine (for example with regard to better recognition of psycho-social illnesses) and summed up: ‘Gender medicine is not a nice-to-have, it is a human rights requirement!