No, I tell my iPhone’s autocorrect function, I really did mean femtech – not fintech. While one is crypto-focused, the other concerns the cryptic state of women’s health, a market projected to be worth $97 billion (€83 billion) by 2030, according to a recent Irish report. The authors want to position Ireland as a leader in gendered health tech. In Ireland, 30 start-ups, many women-led, are innovating in areas such as endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and menopause.
We all know the phrase: “If childbirth/periods/perimenopausal symptoms [insert women’s health variable here] were a man’s problem, it would have been solved by now.” Does femtech suggest so-called women’s troubles might soon be taken as seriously as men’s?
As things stand, the history of gendered health tech is one of not enough data (and not enough women). Take the contraceptive pill, marketed in the 1960s after a decade of trials in Puerto Rico. Enovid was designed as a “universal” contraceptive, a one-size-fits-all that ignored women’s diverse bodies and needs.
And who was the contraceptive pill really designed for? Its 21 days of hormones followed by a seven-day withdrawal bleed were a deliberate choice to mimic “natural” menstrual cycles, making it more palatable, not just to users, but also to religious institutions. Dr John Rock, a devout Catholic who co-developed the contraceptive, acted in the misguided hope that the bleed would align the pill more closely with the rhythm method in the eyes of the church.
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Healthcare in general suffers from what Catherine D’Ignazio, the author of Data Feminism, has called the gender data gap. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, an FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) guidance excluded women of childbearing age from early-stage clinical trials. The result is that many drugs were optimised by default for male bodies, with no research into how sex differences might affect drug metabolism, dosage or side effects.
[ Femtech is about finally prioritising women’s health in a world focused on menOpens in new window ]
Then there’s the speculum, a gynaecological instrument created with the user in mind – aka, a clinician, not the patient. These are just a few examples in a long history of health technologies designed for women without really considering how women and their bodies respond.
Health tech has a habit of treating the user as a genderless everybody, which in practice usually means young, white, able-bodied, well-educated men, reflecting the designer’s own demographic group. And it’s not just health tech either: VR headsets, PPE, crash-test dummies, even musical instruments are built for male bodies.
The problem isn’t always a lack of data. Sometimes, it’s too much of the wrong kind. The pill was tested in Puerto Rico because population control programmes were already in place, funded by US philanthropy. J Marrion Sims, known as the father of modern gynaecology, developed today’s bivalve speculum while undertaking experimental surgeries on enslaved African women without consent or anaesthetic.
In the mid-20th century, US venereal disease registries enabled the detention of women under public health laws. Henrietta Lacks, an African-American cancer patient at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s, had her cancer cells taken without her consent. They became the immortal HeLa cell line, used in countless medical breakthroughs. Her family received no compensation.
In Ireland, the Magdalene laundries kept records of “fallen women” for moral surveillance, not maternal care. Today, period and fertility-tracking apps raise similar concerns: in 2021, the Federal Trade Commission in the US charged the Flo app with sharing sensitive data with Facebook, Google and analytics firms, despite promising privacy. In the US, there are now fears such data could be subpoenaed in states where abortion is criminalised.
The femtech gold rush promises to undo these wrongs, promising to keep central personalised design, diverse user input, and lived experience in product development. Ireland is already taking steps to ensure women’s health innovation isn’t left entirely to market forces. As the Femtech in Ireland: The Case for Prioritising Women’s Health Research and Innovation report notes, women’s health is “a billion-dollar opportunity,” and “smart economics”, but it’s also an area where public support has delivered real results.
[ Ireland has potential to become global leader in femtech, report saysOpens in new window ]
Through programmes such as Femtech @ Health Innovation Hub Ireland, Horizon 2020, and Enterprise Ireland seed funding, dozens of Irish companies have been able to bring early-stage ideas into clinical testing, from Coroflo’s real-time breast-milk monitor to IdentifyHer’s wearable menopause sensor. This public backing centres women’s health in national innovation strategy. It proves the viability of solutions for historically under-researched conditions.
But once companies move from research and prototyping to a scaled product, private capital becomes essential. Coroflo raised $2.8 million from private investors; IdentifyHer is currently seeking pre-seed funding. Venture capital can accelerate growth, but as tech writer Edward Ongweso argues, it doesn’t necessarily fund what’s best, socially or holistically, raising questions about what values get built into women’s health tech and who will be able to afford new advances.
Privacy is another concern. In 2012, Target made headlines for predicting a teenager’s pregnancy based on her purchasing data, sending her baby-product offers before she had told her family. Pregnancy data is extremely lucrative – worth two or three times that of a “general” consumer – because it signals future spending. Menopause, long under-researched, is another rich data set, flagging future health needs and spending patterns.
Much of the data gathered by femtech companies is proprietary, giving whoever collects it a first-mover advantage when it comes to developing drugs, therapies or insurance products. Proprietary data can mean commercial incentives, with no benefit to those being studied, from resale to insurers to invasive advertising (women over 35 are already plagued by ads for mushroom and flax supplements on Instagram). And, as any open-source advocate will tell you, it also means less public benefit; valuable health insights aren’t always shared if they form part of a company’s intellectual property.
Ireland has already shown that sustained, targeted public support can lead to meaningful innovation in women’s health. The challenge now is to keep momentum beyond the start-up phase, so that femtech in Ireland doesn’t just mirror short-term venture capital cycles, but grows into a genuine revolution in women’s care.
