Two thoughts on why “women’s health” as a category is increasingly not helpful

Over the last few years, the number of companies being built to address women’s health needs has skyrocketed. There are now 763+ companies globally dedicated to this cause (McKinsey & Co, 2022). But let’s put this into perspective: if having 763 companies to tackle challenges faced by 4 billion people worldwide is considered to be the edge of that sky, then we are just scratching the surface.

Image of the opening panel at the Women’s Health Innovation Summit in Boston, US

Nevertheless, it is certainly true that we are talking more than ever before about women’s health, their quality of life, participation in the economy, and overall outcomes. The conversations tend to be richer, more frequent, and more inclusive than ever before. This is a testament to the growing recognition of the importance of women’s health in our global society.

However, as researchers and clinicians delve deeper, they’re startled by the realisation that we, as a society, have been woefully under-informed about women’s bodies. And while changing these gaps in our knowledge will take time, governments, employers and investors are already awakening to the needs of the 4 billion individuals ignored before, and the $1 trillion opportunity (CNBC, 2023 — check out min 6:55 for Samphire’s feature) they represent.

Recently, after attending the Women’s Health Innovation Summit in the US, I noticed two major points lacking in the conversation: the importance of continuity in women’s health care, and the fact that calling women’s health companies “women’s health companies” may do them — and everyone else involved in the decision-making of their future — a disservice.

1. Women’s health outcomes and risk profiles are continuous rather than binary throughout their lives. We are now increasingly learning about the predictive power of women’s life events over their future life events. To appropriately assess risk and benefit profiles, we should be looking at women’s healthcare across life stages rather than only within them— which would lead to more effective treatment and diagnosis delivery, accessibility, and better care. For example, we now know that premenstrual disorders are not only associated with, but also predictive of, post-partum depression, major depressive disorder (Eccles et al., 2023) as well as, as of 5 days ago, early menopause (Yang et al., 2023). This means that by understanding women’s health companies as a combination of “menopause companies”, “motherhood companies”, “fertility companies” or “menstrual companies” doesn’t make much sense in the context of understanding risk profiles even when it does address distinct needs of women at those times. After all, the same woman will often need to experience all of these stages, and a holistic approach should consider this appropriately.
2. On the more commercial side, it often seems forgotten that women’s health companies are medical technology, SaaS, healthcare, and financial advisory businesses, among others. Treating them as a category of its own ignores the massive financial upside of tapping into those opportunities, and the female-focused angle of these otherwise “traditional” businesses. This misunderstanding, which lumps diverse value propositions and business models into one, constructed category, leads to less early stage support and investment (“I have already made my “women’s health” investment”), which means that these businesses never stand a chance of proving out their models in the first place. This leads to a broken cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies that leave “women’s health” businesses with few poster children exits or large-scale operations that prove out the potential for impact and commercial success.

To me, the fact that the way we talk about women-dominant health challenges and innovation is still based on individual life events (like pregnancy or menopause) that need to be lumped together for discussion (like women’s health) is characteristic of a still-immature field that can afford to be categorised so simplistically. However, the innovation that is happening among the companies within that “women’s health” bucket, to me, suggests that it may be time to move forward, and start thinking of women’s health as other forms of healthcare, benefitting from categories like digital, diagnostic, therapeutic, treatment, and beyond.

In conclusion, I’m thrilled to see the momentum in the women’s health sector. Yet, there’s so much more to explore, understand, and invest in. Remembering that women are rational and economic actors, as well as emotional and caring decision makers in families and beyond, and that they want their needs addressed throughout their life, as their bodies undergo major changes, can bring lots more light to the discussion on women’s health. And while women’s health, I believe, still at its core is an impact-focused area of work, in order to succeed it needs to be acknowledged as a commercial opportunity as well.