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Sources

Where our numbers come from.

We only publish figures we can trace to a primary source. Each statistic below links to the original research, with its year and any limits on how it should be read.

  1. 1

    7% of Canada's federal health research grants funded female-specific health in 2023

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    7.16% — 55 of 768 funded CIHR project grants

    Biology of Sex Differences (peer-reviewed) — Women's health research funding in Canada across 15 years suggests low funding levels with a narrow focus. Published 2025 · data 2009–2023.

    Across the full 15-year period, female-specific research received 6.38% of all CIHR project and operating grant funding.

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  2. 2

    5.4 years — the average wait for an endometriosis diagnosis in Canada

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    5.4 years: 3.1 years to first consultation, 2.3 years from consultation to diagnosis

    Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada — Prevalence, Symptomatic Burden, and Diagnosis of Endometriosis in Canada: Cross-Sectional Survey of 30,000 Women. 2020.

    Based on a survey of 28,532 Canadian women. Diagnosis was self-reported rather than confirmed from medical records.

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  3. 3

    1 in 2 women having a heart attack have their symptoms go unrecognized

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    Half of women who experience a heart attack have their symptoms go unrecognized

    Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada — Women's heart and brain health. 2023.

    Heart & Stroke also reports that 32,271 women in Canada died of heart disease and stroke in 2019 — one woman every 16 minutes. This is the foundation's published figure; it does not cite an underlying dataset.

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  4. 4

    Anxiety among young women in Canada tripled in just ten years

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    Generalized anxiety disorder among women aged 15–24 rose from 3.8% in 2012 to 11.9% in 2022

    Statistics Canada · Health Reports — Mental disorders and access to care in Canada. Published 2023 · data collected 2022.

    Over the same period, major depressive episodes among young women doubled, from 9.0% to 18.4%.

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How we choose a statistic

We use Canadian data wherever it exists, cite the original study or agency rather than news coverage of it, and state the year the data was collected. Where a figure is self-reported, regional, or drawn from a single survey, we say so rather than rounding it into something firmer than it is.

What we cannot tell you

Canada does not systematically collect race-based perinatal data, so there is no national figure for maternal mortality among Black or Indigenous women. Statistics circulating online are almost always drawn from the United States. The strongest Canadian evidence is regional — an Ontario study found Black patients had 2.85 times the risk of very preterm birth compared with white patients. That absence of national data is itself part of the problem.