A prominent obstetrician has called for an end to women’s hospitals, arguing that the idea started with noble intentions but has become a form of “gender apartheid” leading to second-rate care.

Women’s hospitals cater for the pelvic area in women, but when patients have respiratory, cardiac or renal issues, the centres have neither the specialists nor the equipment to treat them, says Associate Professor Vinay Rane.

“As an obstetrician and gynaecologist, I work in these buildings and I have seen the pride that comes with creating spaces designed especially for women,” Professor Rane wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. 

“But good intentions do not insulate a system from unintended consequences, and what began as advocacy has, in many places, hardened into something that feels much more like exclusion.”