In the last quarter of 2025 a group of older women’s organizations, the Platform Older Women Rights NL, wrote a shadow report “Older Women (Women50+) in the Netherlands’ and sent it into the Convention on the Eliminations of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) committee.
On the 6th of February 2026 the CEDAW committee of 22 women and one man had a ‘constructive dialogue’ with the Dutch government to discuss the Report of the Dutch Government itself (on how wonderful the kingdom is for all women) and the Shadow Reports of various organizations, or groups of organizations, on what the level of discrimination against women really is in the Netherlands.
We, the older women groups, had 3 main asks, but also 6260 words in 11 chapters on the state of discrimination of women in real life, especially when you are over 50. Our main ‘asks’ are:
1. Age must be added to Article 1 of our constitution in the list of grounds on which discrimination is forbidden
2. Pension-Care-Penalty must be dealt with for future generations, and for present pensioners there must be financial Compensation for all the care years, or other forms of holding women’s pensions back
3. Healthcare must be fully covered for women ‘beyond the reproductive age’
The CEDAW committee tasked our Kingdom to act on those 3 asks of Older Women. Basically, we, the older women of the Netherlands, got what we asked for. Next to that, quite a number of other items in our 16 page shadow report. Of course, there were other wins for Dutch civil society based on their shadow reports, besides what our group asked for.
Now that healthcare covered for women ‘beyond the reproductive age’ needs direct follow up where it concerns losing your natural hormones – and having a deteriorating health because of that.
At present there are 5 million women over 40 (the average age of the start of losing your hormones, the period called ‘perimenopause) in the Netherlands.
We, women lose our hormones: Estrogen, Progesterone, Testosterone.
We experience around 50 health problems because of this loss of our natural hormones.
I am talking about far more than ‘night sweats’, ‘hot flashes’, or ‘weight gain’.
Cardiovascular health deteriorates because Estrogen no longer protects your blood vessels. Without any difference in diet, or lessening our physical exercises, we grow unhealthier. Cortisol spikes during the night, disturbing and shortening our sleep. Cholesterol rises, Blood pressure rises. All due to the loss of hormones.
And then there is brain fog, loss of concentration, loss of decisiveness. All limiting our functioning in our work-life. We drop out of the workforce because of it.
All the while it is so very simple to combat this: GIVE WOMEN THEIR HORMONES.
No doctor would hesitate to prescribe thyroid medicine for someone with a thyroid malfunction. No doctor, certainly, ever hesitated in prescribing insulin for a patient who has lost the ability to produce their own.
However, where loss of female hormones is concerned doctors tell women, too often, that is ‘natural’ and a ‘phase that you must go through’. A very curious point of view as that ‘phase’ (without hormones) will only end when the patient dies. There is no going through. The lost hormones will not naturally come back, just like insulin or thyroid hormones will not naturally come back. In the end, this belief of ‘menopause/post menopause’ as natural results in women in the Netherlands having poor health for 35 years of their lives. 35 years!
Why would we, women of the Netherlands, put up with such neglect of our health care needs?
Well, more and more we don’t. We visit our General Practitioners and ask for hormone replacement, but often meet resistance as GPs were never trained in the use of hormone replacement medicine.
En masse, we try to get appointments with gynecologists to get hormones, resulting in 1,5 years of waiting lists. We turn to private clinics with shorter wait lists, if we are able to afford it, or desperate enough to pay out of pocket for consult and hormones, regardless whether we can truly afford it. For we feel miserable. We feel sick. We feel neglected.
There is absolutely no way that I, president of the Women’s Rights organization (established 1894) by a female doctor, no less, will stand for this neglect. So, I started to plan for breaking this medical barrier for you and me in April 2024. I am a researcher at heart and I started to read medical relevant texts, study medical hormone/ gynecological professionals in the US, UK, or anywhere else on planet Earth.
Instagram, podcasts on Facebook, books (the new menopause, and many others) by gynecologists, urologists. Medical specialists in the know.
In April 2024 a groundbreaking longitudinal study among 10 million women of 65 years or older, followed for 14 years, was published. These older women, many beyond 10 years of having their last menstrual period, who receive bio-identical hormones to replace what they had lost, live healthier lives over the broad spectrum of their health. Significantly fewer cases of breast cancer, or colorectal cancer, fewer cases of cardiovascular problems, fewer cases of Alzheimer, and the list goes on and on.
This study proved that Bio-Identical Hormones are safe, also safe to take after 65 years of age. Think about it, if you follow women who are at least 65 for 14 years, they have reached at minimum the age of 79!
It is 2026. We know better. The doctors around the world know better. The doctors in the Netherlands (NVOG among them) are learning. We, women, are learning, as we find each other online. We inform each other online or in person.
We now KNOW that we should not suffer. We have a RIGTH to healthcare (just as CEDAW told our Dutch government) also beyond reproductive age.
Denying us hormone replacement healthcare is ‘neglect’ (Convention of Istanbul ranks neglect as violence)
Denying us hormone replacement healthcare is discrimination,
as men do get their testosterone prescription
and it is PAID for by our Basic Healthcare Insurance for men also.
This study showed that repudiation in 2001 of hormone replacement therapy for women was based on faulty data and basically bad research. Which research results happened to be corrected already in 2004, but that correction was missed by the mainstream media and your doctors. What remained was the hype that ‘hormone replacement was bad for women’. And thus a whole generation of women suffered needlessly without hormone replacement.
Therefore, I am going to take the insurers, the Dutch government, to court:
I demand on behalf of myself, simultaneously on behalf of all of us:
- Full reimbursement of the costs of Bio-Identical Hormones for women under the basis healthcare Insurance in the Netherlands;
- Hormone Replacement Therapy with BIO-IDENTICAL hormones to be prescribed by our General Practitioners;
- Transdermal versions of Bio-Identical Hormones to be prescribed (as a Danish study published February 2026 showed that you live longer on transdermal versions, than on the pill versions of these hormones).
Stay tuned for the information of the court case.