The 210 slumsSlums of VaranasiVaranasi city are homeHome to nearly one-third of its population. Close to half of this one-third is constituted by womenWomen and girls. The United Nation explains how womenWomen are more caught up in the cycle of poverty as compared to men, yet gendered deprivations and identitiesIdentity rarely find place in anti-poverty strategies. Given this overarching scenario, this research makes an attempt to explain the gaps in terms of incomes and expenditures on healthHealth, essentially through a gendered lens. In doing so, it draws heavily from Engel’s conceptualization of expenditures on non-food items being positively related to changes in income levels. Data on income, health expendituresHealth expenditures and other relevant details were collected through field work in the slumsSlums of VaranasiVaranasi city during 2021–22. Areal purposive snowball sampling method was used such that those slumSlums households could be reached where healthHealth was a concern. A total of 8001 individuals were surveyed over a period of almost two years. Of which, 3148 working individuals were filtered out to construct the P–P plots so as to explain the probabilities of expenditure on healthHealth with increasing probabilities of income. The study went on to find that with increasing probabilities of income, the probabilities of health expendituresHealth expenditures remain constant initially and then sharply rise, which is not entirely in agreement with Engel’s notion of conditional expenditures. 1291 individuals from the selected slumsSlums across all income groups, out of a total of 3148 working individuals, spend less than 5% of their income on healthHealth. Almost 60% of the slumSlums population surveyed spent less than 1000 Indian rupees on healthHealth in a year. Girl children have lesser claims to health expendituresHealth expenditures unlike elderly womenWomen. The field survey also revealed that womenWomen could claim a larger share in the household health expendituresHealth expenditures upon entering the reproductive age group and due to serious illness or prolonged treatment. Housewives largely reported not falling ill at all during the past year; 62% of those who did, the frequency was three times or more. Access to healthHealth care facility is also limited for married non-working womenWomen. Spending behaviour on healthHealth care with respect to working men and working womenWomen reveals a clear gendered pattern. Health expendituresHealth expenditures by working womenWomen do not shoot up even at higher income levels, unlike men.