Bridging the rural divide: Women’s health in Wales

Cefin Campbell, Plaid Cymru Member of the Senedd for Mid and West Wales

For far too long, women in Wales have been told their pain is normal, their symptoms imagined, or their conditions simply not important enough to warrant serious attention. From endometriosis to chronic fatigue, from reproductive health to autoimmune disease, women’s health has been sidelined. The result is what many now rightly call medical misogyny.

The Welsh Government’s Women’s Health Plan acknowledges these issues, but words alone do not change lives. It makes no binding commitments to clinician training, independent auditing, or accountability. Most damningly, it fails to recognise the particular challenges women in rural Wales face every single day: GP and A&E closures, deteriorating transport links, poor digital connectivity, and a lack of specialist provision. Prevention and innovation mean little if women cannot physically reach a doctor or access basic care in their own communities.

Neglect

These are not isolated issues. Women across rural Wales face systemic disbelief and neglect, often leading to delayed diagnoses, chronic pain, and diminished quality of life, with the consequences rippling outwards. Women’s health is not only a personal issue, it underpins economic productivity, family wellbeing, and the cohesion of entire communities. In counties like Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, where women often work in low-paid seasonal jobs and child poverty rates reach 34%, poor health outcomes only deepen cycles of hardship and inequality.

I have witnessed this inadequate care first hand. My own daughter suffered chronic debilitating pain for 13 years because her symptoms were dismissed as normal period pains for so long. Rather than investigating further what might be the underlying reason for the excruciating pain she was suffering, she was offered nothing more than mental health support and a few paracetamols! Through her own sheer determination and belligerence, she was finally diagnosed in a West Wales hospital with adenomyosis. However, after moving to Cardiff, when she was at last admitted to hospital for a laparoscopy, it turned out that she had been misdiagnosed – she didn’t have adenomyosis, but stage 4 endometriosis!

The care my daughter received simply wasn’t good enough. Sadly, my daughter is one of many that I know of who have been let down by the health system.

Postcode

We cannot therefore accept a healthcare system where a woman’s postcode determines whether she receives timely care. We cannot accept a policy framework that treats women’s health as an afterthought.

That is why I am calling for change. The Welsh Government must embed gender analysis across all policy areas from transport and planning to rural economics. It must commit to legislation or an independent Women’s Health Charter to guarantee accountability and systemic reform. And it must shift focus away from short-term fixes towards tackling the root causes of women’s poor health: medical misogyny, underfunded research, and the structural barriers that rural communities face.

The truth is simple: women in Wales deserve better. Anything less condemns another generation of women to pain, neglect, and silence.