Why Top Executives Gathered to Discuss Women’s Health
Women’s Health Summit 2026 · Shanghai
On March 8th, 65 senior executives gathered at the Portman Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai for the Women’s Health Summit 2026 Corporate Roundtable. Belgian (hub.brussels) and Italian trade commissioners attended, alongside the Belgian Consul for Economic Affairs and representatives from the Shanghai Women’s Chamber of Commerce. The calibre of attendance reflected how seriously this conversation is now being taken at the highest levels of business and government.
Opening the Day
FemCourage Founder, Neuroscientist Laimei Yeung opened the morning with a personal call to action. She urged the audience to see women’s health not merely as a topic for white papers or a marketing opportunity. “Women’s health is about our mothers, sisters, daughters, ourselves, our employees,” she said. “It’s a systemic issue that needs interdisciplinary cooperation so that every woman has a good quality of life. It will have a huge impact on society as women hold up half of the sky.”
Seventy-two percent of women in China’s tier-one cities report health-related performance issues at work. Only twelve percent of menopausal women seek help because the stigma remains that heavy. For organisations, that silence carries a direct cost through missed deadlines, rising sick leave, and experienced talent stepping back during peak career years. Most leadership teams are absorbing these costs without realising it, because they lack a framework for connecting women’s health to operational performance. The roundtable was designed to provide that framework.
A Trilateral Welcome Framing European-Chinese Collaboration, Aligned with Shanghai’s Business Community.
Lucy Lei, Board Member of BenCham, brought together four voices representing the critical pillars of the women’s health ecosystem: science, government, innovation, and economic empowerment.
Yang Bin, incoming President of the Shanghai Women’s Chamber of Commerce, grounded the conversation in the power of female entrepreneurship. Her presence was a reminder that the solutions to women’s health challenges will often come from the very women they are designed to serve, and that bridging the gap between entrepreneurs and corporate structures is essential.
Mattias DeBroyer of hub.brussels highlighted the immense potential for cross-border collaboration. The health tech being built in China already has buyers in Europe, and Brussels is a practical door in for companies ready to scale across the European single market.
Raffaele Zinno, President of PSAF International, flagged a structural gap most HR teams have not noticed yet. Menopause and reproductive health are still excluded from most corporate insurance policies, which means the benefits companies are promising their people do not yet exist in practice. As companies build more progressive policies, the insurance and risk assessment industries will need to evolve with them.
Dr. Hamida Ouled Slimane, a neuroscientist, grounded the conversation in biology, exploring the often-invisible impact of high-pressure, cross-cultural work on women’s long-term neurological health. She asked a pointed question for employers: what are the most underappreciated neurological consequences of sustained workplace stress on women, and why are most organisations not paying attention until it is too late?
The Science of Stress and the Architecture of the Brain
Dr. Steven Laureys, MD PhD – World-leading neurologist and consciousness researcher (90,000+ citations); Professor at Hangzhou Normal University and Hangzhou Institute of Medicine (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Université Laval (Canada), Liege University (Belgium), Harvard Medical School, and Chairman of the Audacious Disability Innovations Program, King Salman Center for Disability Research, King Saud University.
Dr. Laureys reminded the room of the brain’s extraordinary capacity. “The brain is the organ of adaptation and transformation,” he said. His work on neuroplasticity carries a deeply hopeful message: our brains can change throughout life. But sustained workplace stress adversely changes brain structure, and decision-making suffers as a result. Women are already carrying more cognitive and emotional weight than most workplaces acknowledge, which means they feel the effects sooner and harder. Supporting women’s health through education, leadership opportunities, and stress management is, quite literally, giving half the world’s brains the conditions they need to flourish.
Dr. Hung Tsuo-Hsing, Neurologist and Functional Medicine Expert, WA Clinics, Ikang Group
Dr. Hung delivered a stark warning on sleep, detailing its direct link to dementia, chronic illness, and weight gain. Poor sleep is not a personal failing; it is a systemic risk that organisations have a stake in addressing.
Dr. Sun Jing, Professor at Tongji University and Chief Physician ( First Maternity and Children’s hospital)
Dr. Sun connected lifestyle factors to specific conditions. One in ten women has endometriosis, and most of them are sitting in your meetings managing it quietly. Chronic stress, poor sleep, and hormonal changes compound the picture in ways most organisations never discuss. Her message to corporate leaders was direct: invest in stress management, sleep, and nutrition, and you are improving both individual wellbeing and overall organisational performance.
Panel 2: The Corporate Bottom Line – From Risk to Resilience
If the doctors provided the “why,” the corporate leaders provided the “how.” A panel moderated by John Xu, Board member of the Yangtze Development Council, pressure-tested the economic theory.
Magen Xia, Managing Director of BCG Healthcare, grounded the discussion in the staggering one-trillion-dollar GDP opportunity that closing the women’s health gap represents globally. She pushed further, arguing that femtech is systematically underpriced because it is filed under the wrong category. Women’s health spans cardiology, neurology, and immunology. Organisations treating it as a niche HR benefit are looking at only a fraction of what is actually at stake.
Curtis Baker, Head of Inclusion and Employee Experience at Dow Asia Pacific, shared how Dow built its women’s health policy in direct partnership with its women’s employee resource group, through substantive conversations on menopause, mental health, and financial wellbeing across the Asia Pacific. He emphasised that the process matters as much as the policy itself. When the people the policy is designed to serve help write it, it reflects their actual lives rather than assumptions about them.
July Xiao, Sales and Marketing Director at Fesco-Adecco, has watched the talent market shift over 18 years in talent management. High-potential female talent in China now expects fertility, menopause, and mental health support as standard benefits. Organisations that still treat these as perks are signalling to the market that they have not been paying attention.
A Final Prescription
Dr. Ioana Kraft (Associate Director, XP-M and EUCCC HR Chair) shared the closing thoughts of Dr. Giuseppe Noschese, a crisis medicine specialist. He sees rising stress, chronic fatigue, and mid-career female attrition the same way a doctor reads symptoms. They point to something deeper. When good women are burning out and leaving, the organisation needs to look at itself, not at them.
His message was both a diagnosis and a prescription. Women’s health is the main infrastructure of society. It is a systemic issue that demands interdisciplinary cooperation, courageous corporate action, and a fundamental shift in how organisations measure value.
We closed the corporate roundtable with a delicious lunch and a neuro-sensory chocolate experience (mindful eating) led by Laimei Yeung and Isa Li of Pierre Marcolini. The exercise was an experiment in mindful eating—a reminder that a well-deserved pause, fully felt, is part of how we sustain both quality of life and quality of work.”
The Decision to Act
Most organisations already have the numbers. The missing piece is the decision to act on them.
“The companies that act on women’s health today are building the workforces everyone else will envy.” — Laimei Yeung
We spent the afternoon preparing for the future by getting present.
55 women explored how the health of our homes, our hips, and our breath carries us forward.
From the stable to the treatment table, from cacao to a letter to our 95-year-old selves… this is how we step into the new year.
With Gratitude
Sincere thanks to the General Representative of hub.brussels and Consul of Economic Affairs, the Italian trade commissioner, the Shanghai Women’s Chamber of Commerce, Benelux Chamber, BritCham, SwissCham, the Indian Association, The Bridge Lawfirm and all 65 attendees who brought their expertise and candour to a morning that produced deep thinking and commitments that will make a difference.
Premier Event Partners
FESCO-ADECCO · IKANG GROUP · PSAF INTERNATIONAL
Sponsors
Helevated · Pierre Marcolini · Rodeo · Biomobie · Shanghai East International Hospital