The gender divide

Across these insured test reports, male and female results show different patterns. Among the female reports here, one in three is below the haemoglobin cutoff. Among the male ones, three in ten carry at least one raised liver enzyme. Neither share is anywhere near as high in the other group, and the two findings sit in different parts of a test panel.

The useful comparison is test by test. Five of the eight markers below use one cutoff for everyone, and male reports have the higher flagged share on four. The other three use different limits for women and men. Those results can show how often each group crosses its own limit, but they cannot be combined into a score for which group is healthier.

These are reports from insured employees and covered family members. The laboratory, survey and claims files are separate; they do not identify the same people across the three sets of findings.

On the markers with one cutoff for both sexes, the male share is higher on four of five#

Across the five single-cutoff rows the male share leads on four: liver enzymes by 21.0 percentage points, triglycerides by 16.9, B12 by 14.6 and vitamin D by 5.8. The one row running the other way is blood sugar, where the female share leads by 2.3 points, the narrowest of the five.

Laboratory results count reports from insured employees and covered family, not unique people. Haemoglobin cutoffs are not adjusted for age or pregnancy. Each marker uses its own test base; survey, laboratory and claims records are not linked person by person.

WHI 2025 reported normal HbA1c in 63.6% of female and 62.1% of male results. The remaining shares were therefore about 36.4% and 37.9%, compared with 39.9% and 37.6% at or above 5.7% in this edition. The female reported share is about 3.5 points higher; the male share is close to the earlier level.

The 2025 combined blood-sugar share is estimated from its published normal share.

The top three rows apply different thresholds to male and female reports. A non-pregnant adult woman at 12.5 g/dL of haemoglobin is not anemic and a man with the same reading is; the WHO's 2024 guideline puts the adult cutoffs at 120 g/L for non-pregnant women aged 15 to 65 and 130 g/L for men. Each of those shares is the share of reports failing that sex's own criterion, so the pair is not two readings of one scale. They can be reported side by side, as above. What cannot be built from them is a ratio presented as a difference in risk, or a score for which sex is in better health overall. For ESR the report publishes no ratio at all between the two shares.

This page uses sex-specific HDL cutoffs. Triglycerides here are strictly above 150 mg/dL; Lipids uses 150 or above, so those shares differ by definition.

One in three female haemoglobin reports is below the cutoff, and in Mumbai it is one in two#

34.6% of the 4,375 female haemoglobin reports fall below 12 g/dL. Among the 5,210 male reports, 8.9% fall below the male cutoff of 13. Both figures count test reports, and each is measured against its own clinical cutoff.

The whole-sample pair hides how much the distance changes with age. On the anemia page's own bands, 30.6% of the 1,343 female reports in the 20s are below the female cutoff against 4.0% of the 1,585 male reports below the male one; by 60 and over the shares are 42.0% of 367 and 32.2% of 357. Recomputed from the underlying counts rather than the rounded cells, the female share is about 7.7 times the male one in the 20s and about 1.3 times at 60 and over. That is a ratio between two flag shares, each measured against a different threshold, and not a statement about how much more likely one sex is to be ill.

More than half the female reports from Mumbai are below the cutoff, against fewer than a quarter of those from Bengaluru: a 29-point spread between two metros in the same book of business. These five reporting areas cover 3,785 of the 4,375 female reports; they are pincode-based groupings, not workplaces, and they are not the whole sample.

Among the five metros, Mumbai also has the highest share of female HbA1c reports at or above 5.7%: 49.8% of 426 reports, against 39.9% across all 3,262 female reports. The blood sugar page takes the measure apart in full.

WHI 2025 reported anemia in 36.5% of the women it tested, 443 of 1,214, and 8.3% of the men, 125 of 1,505. This edition records 34.6% and 8.9%.

WHI 2025 did not state its haemoglobin cutoffs, so these are published anaemia shares rather than a confirmed like-for-like threshold comparison.

For scale outside this book of business, India's National Family Health Survey 5 (2019–21) recorded 57.2% of non-pregnant women aged 15 to 49 as anaemic at a 12.0 g/dL cutoff, and 25.0% of men aged 15 to 49 at 13.0 g/dL: the same numerical cutoffs, applied to a different population and with survey adjustments. It is a national household survey rather than an insured testing panel, and its own fact sheet notes that because NFHS measures capillary blood, its results need not be compared with surveys using venous blood. It sets a backdrop, not a benchmark.

Maternity, and how claims by recorded sex compare#

Maternity is the clearest cost line attached to the female side of this book. It accounts for 10.6% of all claims and 10.5% of incurred cost, at an average of ₹42,816 a claim. 77.1% of those claims are filed for a covered spouse and 22.3% for the employee, so most maternity claims are raised on the dependent layer of the policy. That is a statement about how often claims are filed there, not about where the rupees land. The maternity and delivery page takes it apart in full.

Across all claims the two recorded sexes come out close, and in opposite directions. Claims recorded as female are 48.2% of all claims and 45.7% of incurred cost, averaging ₹40,848; claims recorded as male are 44.8% and 47.3%, averaging ₹45,535. Women file somewhat more claims; men's claims cost somewhat more each. 7.0% of claims, and the same share of incurred cost, carry no usable sex label. The claims file cannot be joined to the test reports or to the survey, so none of this says who in the covered population was ill.

Raised liver enzymes affect 30.1% of male reports and 9.1% of female reports#

30.1% of the 4,433 male liver reports carry at least one raised enzyme, against 9.1% of the 3,377 female ones. At 21.0 percentage points that is the largest difference among the five markers on this page measured against one cutoff for both sexes, ahead of triglycerides at 16.9. The haemoglobin columns sit further apart, but use different sex-specific thresholds. ESR also uses separate thresholds and is not included in this ranking.

SGPT (ALT), SGOT (AST) and GGT are enzymes used in liver assessment. A raised result means the measured blood level exceeds the report's threshold; it does not identify the cause. NIDDK treats raised ALT and AST as a reason to investigate fatty liver disease, within a history that also has to establish alcohol intake and rule out other causes of liver disease. A flag on this panel is a reason for assessment. It is not a diagnosis, and nothing in these reports identifies a cause. The liver page carries the measure in full.

Men lead on diabetic-range blood sugar in their 30s; women lead on raised urate after 50#

Read at the whole-sample level, several markers look close between the sexes. Split by age band, they separate, and in one case they cross.

Diabetic-range blood sugar, HbA1c at 6.5% or above:

Both shares climb steadily across the bands; neither peaks and falls. What changes is the distance between them. It is widest in the 30s, on both readings: six percentage points apart, and a male share about 2.4 times the female one when the multiple is recomputed from the counts. At 60 and over the shares are almost equal: 41.5% of female reports and 41.2% of male reports. Because both columns use the same 6.5% cutoff, that multiple is a like-for-like comparison in a way the haemoglobin and ESR pairs are not. The blood sugar page carries the whole-sample curve this contrast hides inside.

Raised urate runs the other way, and crosses. The kidney page's selected measure is strictly above 6 mg/dL for women and above 7 for men, so this is a two-cutoff marker: each column is read against its own criterion and the two are not differenced.

The male share rises from 23.5% in the 20s to 25.7% in the 30s, then falls to 9.5% in the 50s before rising to 15.8% at 60 and over. The female share rises across all five bands, from 6.6% to 27.2%. It is below the male share through the 40s and above it from the 50s onward. These are different age groups, not people followed as they grew older; the data neither dates a crossover within a decade nor identifies its cause.

Men report more alcohol and nicotine use; women more often report no 30-minute exercise sessions#

The survey ran alongside the tests but is a separate exercise: 9,097 responses describe how people say they live, and an answer is a report of behaviour rather than a measurement of it.

The widest of these six rows is not the nicotine one. Any drinking separates the sexes by 16.6 points and nicotine by 14.5, while going a usual week without a single session of 30 minutes or more runs 10.7 points the other way, with women higher. The nicotine question counts replacement products as well as smoking, so it is not a smoking rate. The exercise question counts sessions of at least 30 minutes, so that row is a week with no qualifying session rather than a week without moving. Caffeine and eating out separate the sexes by under two points each, which is a small observed difference rather than a demonstrated equality.

These are answers to a questionnaire and the marker tables above are laboratory reports. They are separate records of the same insured population, not joined response to report.

The stress difference held near ten points; the sleep difference more than doubled#

The 2026 figures rest on 2,299 female and 5,021 male responses for stress, and 2,344 and 5,197 for sleep. The 2025 figures come from that edition's own stress and sleep tables, on 1,125 female and 2,304 male responses for stress and 1,125 and 2,306 for sleep.

Nearly half the women answering report high stress, against a little over a third of the men, and both shares are higher than the previous edition recorded. The male share rose slightly more, 6.8 points against 6.2, which leaves the reported distance between the sexes about where it was: 10.7 points then, 10.1 now. Both rose. What moved them is not something either survey measured.

Sleep is the measure that separated. The female share in the two shortest bands rose 5.1 points while the male share rose 0.5, taking the reported difference from 3.4 points to 8.0. The sleep page holds the band definitions and the whole-sample movement.

Women also report more use of professional support. 15.7% of 2,311 female responses record having taken therapy or counselling at some point, past or current, against 7.8% of 5,054 male responses. That is lifetime use as reported in a survey, not a measure of whether it helped anyone, and the stress page holds the full distribution.

Sleep definitions differ: 2026 combines the under-five and five-to-six-hour bands; 2025 reports under six without documenting its boundary rule. The 2025 stress recall period is also unstated.

Men more often select no listed care activity; women more often name a supplement#

45.2% of the 4,798 male responses to the preventive-action question selected "none of these", against 36.1% of the 2,227 female responses. The list on offer was a routine or preventive doctor consultation, a consultation for a symptom or illness, a full-body diagnostic test, a company-organised health camp or screening, and a fitness assessment. This is the share selecting the "none" option, not a confirmed absence of all five actions: 53 responses across the full sample also selected a listed action. It cannot be read as no healthcare of any kind. Supplements run the same way: 42.6% of 2,347 female responses named at least one of the eight listed supplements, against 30.3% of 5,216 male responses. The preventive care and supplementation pages hold both measures in full.

These findings describe different needs. Male responses more often select the no-activity option; male laboratory reports have higher flagged shares on four of the five markers using the same criteria for both sexes. Female responses more often name a supplement, while one in three female haemoglobin reports is below the cutoff. The survey and laboratory files are unlinked: these results do not show whether the people taking supplements or seeking care are the people with abnormal tests.