International Women’s Day is celebrated each year on 8 March and is an opportunity to highlight the challenges faced by women and girls with bleeding disorders, promote strategies to improve their health and wellbeing and empowering them to self-advocate, and celebrate the women in our community.
Women can have haemophilia, von Willebrand disease (VWD), factor XI deficiency, and a range of other rare bleeding disorders.
The 2026 International Women’s Day Australia theme is ‘Balance the Scales’.
Balance the Scales is a promise that every woman and girl – regardless of background or identity – should be safe, heard, and free to shape their own lives. Women and girls with bleeding disorders often face delayed diagnoses, limited access to treatment, and a lack of understanding about their unique needs.
Through recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and care, the quality of life of women and girls will improve, and the bleeding disorders community will become stronger.
Did you know
Only 112,947 women and girls have been identified worldwide with haemophilia, VWD or other bleeding disorders.
- 10,945 with haemophilia.
- 61,921 with von Willebrand disease.
- 40,081 with other bleeding disorders. (4)
However, international experts are concerned that many more are still undiagnosed.
What can we do to help?
We know there are Australian women and girls with haemophilia, or carrying the gene for haemophilia, who are not diagnosed or recorded in the Australian Bleeding Disorders Registry (ABDR).
It is estimated there areat least 4,380 women and girls in Australia who carry the gene for haemophilia – and of those, at least 1095 have haemophilia – however only 696 females with a haemophilia diagnosis are recorded in the Australian Bleeding Disorders Registry (ABDR) 2024, overall.(1)
It’s time to balance the scales
How many women and girls in your family might have haemophilia, or carry the gene, and be undiagnosed? Learn more about inheritance and testing women and girls for haemophilia in the Simple guide to haemophilia testing in women and girls.
References
- Australian Bleeding Disorders Registry (ABDR) Annual Report 2023-24. Canberra: National Blood Authority, 2024.
- Kasper C. How many carriers are there? Haemophilia 2010;16(5):842
- Hermans C, Kulkarni R. Women with bleeding disorders. Haemophilia. 2018;24(Suppl. 6):29-36.
- World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) Report on the Annual Global Survey 2024
