Every Oc­to­ber, the world turns pink. Store­fronts, sports teams, so­cial me­dia pro­files, and all the ac­ces­sories and mer­chan­dise glow in the sig­na­ture shade of Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month.

What be­gan in the 1980s as a hard-won cam­paign to in­crease un­der­stand­ing of a dead­ly dis­ease has un­de­ni­ably saved lives: breast can­cer screen­ing rates have risen, re­search fund­ing has grown, and sur­vival rates have im­proved in many coun­tries.

But more than 40 years lat­er, the tidal wave of pink rib­bons can feel less like a ral­ly­ing cry and more like a sea­son­al mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy—one that risks over­shad­ow­ing the broad­er re­al­i­ties of women’s health.

The com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of Oc­to­ber is hard to miss. Pink mer­chan­dise floods the mar­ket, from cof­fee cups to t-shirts, of­ten with on­ly a frac­tion of pro­ceeds reach­ing cred­i­ble re­search or pa­tient-sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Crit­ics point out that “pinkwash­ing” can al­low com­pa­nies to prof­it from the cause while dis­tract­ing from ques­tions about en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion, work­place ex­po­sures, or un­equal ac­cess to care. Aware­ness alone, es­pe­cial­ly when pack­aged as a month-long shop­ping event, can­not re­place sus­tained ac­tion and year-round fund­ing for pre­ven­tion, screen­ing, and treat­ment.

Per­haps more trou­bling is what the pink spot­light leaves in the shad­ows. Around the world, cer­vi­cal can­cer re­mains a lead­ing cause of can­cer deaths among women—es­pe­cial­ly in low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries. It is es­ti­mat­ed that more women die from cer­vi­cal can­cer than from breast can­cer in these na­tions, de­spite the fact that cer­vi­cal can­cer is al­most en­tire­ly pre­ventable through HPV vac­ci­na­tion and rou­tine Pap smear screen­ing.

Yet, cer­vi­cal can­cer and oth­er gy­nae­co­log­i­cal ma­lig­nan­cies—ovar­i­an, uter­ine, vagi­nal, and vul­val—rarely com­mand the same pub­lic at­ten­tion or phil­an­thropic dol­lars.

Fo­cus­ing ex­clu­sive­ly on breast can­cer each Oc­to­ber risks re­in­forc­ing a nar­row nar­ra­tive of women’s health. The fe­male re­pro­duc­tive sys­tem is com­plex, and can­cers af­fect­ing it re­quire di­verse strate­gies: vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes to pre­vent HPV in­fec­tion, ex­pand­ed ac­cess to Pap and HPV tests, ed­u­ca­tion about symp­toms of ovar­i­an or en­dome­tri­al can­cer, and re­search in­to rare but ag­gres­sive can­cers of the vul­va and vagi­na.

These con­di­tions do not fit neat­ly in­to a sin­gle colour-cod­ed rib­bon or a month on the cal­en­dar, but they are no less de­serv­ing of vis­i­bil­i­ty and re­sources.

A more bal­anced ap­proach would view Oc­to­ber not just as “pink month” but as an en­try point for year-round en­gage­ment. Health­care providers and ad­vo­cates are call­ing for cam­paigns that high­light all fe­male re­pro­duc­tive can­cers and ad­dress glob­al dis­par­i­ties in care.

This could mean pair­ing breast can­cer aware­ness with ed­u­ca­tion about cer­vi­cal can­cer pre­ven­tion; fund­ing vac­ci­na­tion dri­ves in un­der­served re­gions and sup­port­ing re­search in­to less­er-known gy­nae­co­log­ic can­cers. It al­so means em­pow­er­ing women every­where to ad­vo­cate for com­pre­hen­sive re­pro­duc­tive health ser­vices, not just mam­mo­grams.

Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month should be a re­minder—but not the end­point—of our com­mit­ment to women’s health. The pink rib­bon still car­ries mean­ing, but it is most pow­er­ful when it leads to con­crete ac­tion: eq­ui­table ac­cess to screen­ing, af­ford­able treat­ment, and a broad­er con­ver­sa­tion that in­cludes every can­cer that threat­ens women’s lives. Ul­ti­mate­ly, this work has to con­tin­ue every day, in every colour.