I love this. It’s sad that male-dominated venture capital firms aren’t investing in the trillion-dollar FemTech sector. Many apparently cant even say the word vagina in meetings discussing products for women. It’s sad because it’s a massive market and these people have moms, wives, daughters, sisters and will all inevitably deal with periods, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause.
Brigida, I agree the cultural framing you describe is real, and it absolutely matters. There are still environments where people feel uncomfortable discussing women’s bodies, symptoms, or products in a serious commercial context, and that shapes attention and decision-making more than many realize.
And I also think there is a second layer to this which is structural. Many women’s health categories evolved inside reimbursement, regulatory, and adoption environments that looked harder to underwrite and harder to scale. Over time, that compounds the problem which reduces conviction even when the underlying need is enormous.
It's so true and I’ve witnessed it first-hand now at my dad’s new healthcare startup. I make all their ppt decks and I noticed they kept removing any stats or info I put in about women. I was not gonna stop adding women examples and stats, so they finally told me that they feel uncomfortable talking about them… it's 3 white men and they usually present to women in HR. That shocked me. Not only because they're all twice my age and have wives and daughters, but because they've all had extremely successful careers in healthcare.
Exactly. This is a known problem in the femtech VC space. I understand the need for protections in certain circumstances. Like don’t talk about bodies at the regular office etc. But in an investor meeting about a product that helps women (and also the families built around them, basically everyone) these products change lives. If you wife won’t be intimate with you postpartum, if she is having a hard time in nursing, menopause, peri, etc, it affects the family. Industries have plenty of data at this point that diversifying is $$$$$$$, why are women left out when we spend the most money?
Idk its makes no logical sense to me, but they seem to ignore and/or just not care about any problems related to women. I've pointed out many bugs/holes in our platform that result in bad doctor recommendations for our women users, and sometimes they'll actually just laugh and brush it off. Other times they will act concerned, and even create a ticket, but even then 9 out of 10 times the issue/bug ain't getting resolved.. It's just absurd
Thank you for this precise layer: the blind spot is also a market failure.
This is also familiarity being mistaken for neutrality. Not just in women’s health. Everywhere. What gets treated as “standard” is usually just what institutions already know how to measure, recognize, fund, or build around. Everything else gets treated as niche, complicated, unstable, or “too many variables.”
-We see it in healthcare.
-We see it in research recruitment.
-We see it in product design.
-We see it in venture capital.
And then years later, the blind spot gets rediscovered like it was invisible the whole time, when really it sat outside the worldview of the people making decisions.
Randi, ‘familiarity being mistaken for neutrality’ is such a powerful way to frame it.
A lot of what gets treated as ‘standard’ is simply what institutions already know how to measure, fund, and underwrite. Everything outside those frameworks can start to look niche or overly complex even when the opportunity is enormous.
And your point about the blind spot sitting in plain sight all along is exactly right.
Thank you as well for ordering the book. I really appreciate it and can’t wait for you to read it.
Why should anybody make money off of healthcare? We need a system of nationalized healthcare. Focusing on the money that could be made off of women's health is just not enough change right now.
I actually agree that healthcare should not leave people behind because they cannot afford care. But one of the uncomfortable realities is that innovation itself usually requires capital long before treatments ever reach public systems. The MRI, insulin, biologics, robotic surgery, GLP-1s — all required enormous amounts of funding, risk-taking, and infrastructure before they became widely accessible. The question the book asks is: why have some areas of healthcare attracted decades of innovation capital while others remained comparatively invisible?
Before thugs took over the federal government, a great deal of scientific research funding was provided by our government. So basically our tax dollars were working for our benefit. In fact, I live near one of the universities that did the theoretical work upon which robotic surgery is built. Their research was government funded. Let's stop acting and believing that the marketplace can do all for all. That's a fiction and it's starving Americans right now.
I agree that public funding is essential to many major healthcare breakthroughs. But just as the marketplace can’t and shouldn’t do all for all, public funding alone rarely takes innovation through to commercialization and scale. The question I explore in the book is why some areas then attract enormous amounts of follow-on capital and innovation while others remain comparatively overlooked despite clear need. Both parts of the system matter.
So because it cost a great deal to develop a treatment, that should mean that the treatment turns a profit for every single patient? The research scientists who do this work don't buy into this. There is a value above profit motive and poor people's lives don't have to be profit centers.
I had something similar happen which made me switch from children's health to women's health. An undiagnosed iron deficiency for probably most of my 40s. I had all the risk factors and symptoms but they didn't test my iron (ferritin) until I was anemic. To this day we still don't have regular screening guidelines for iron deficiency without anemia. I am actually lucky I became anemic because most women don't. Find out that anemia guidelines were made in the 60s from population data -- where men have naturally higher levels --not health outcome data. So many women-centric disease are linked to iron deficiency! So much work to be done. I'm looking forward to reading your book.
This is such an important example. Iron deficiency without anemia is one of those areas that reveals how much medicine has historically relied on narrow baselines and late-stage detection thresholds. So many women are told their labs are ‘normal’ while still experiencing very real symptoms.
Yes so sad. I believe its one of the root causes behind many of the health conditions more common in women such as depression, thyroid dysfunction, allergies, microvascular dysfunction, adverse pregnancy outcomes, restless leg syndrome and POTS. I always come back to this study done in the 1960s showing that 2/3rds of college women had absent or scant bone marrow iron. Most menstruating women are iron deficient and yet the medical system has done nothing to help them - they don't even screen for iron deficiency (ferritin) in pregnant women! https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/663748
I love this. It’s sad that male-dominated venture capital firms aren’t investing in the trillion-dollar FemTech sector. Many apparently cant even say the word vagina in meetings discussing products for women. It’s sad because it’s a massive market and these people have moms, wives, daughters, sisters and will all inevitably deal with periods, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause.
Brigida, I agree the cultural framing you describe is real, and it absolutely matters. There are still environments where people feel uncomfortable discussing women’s bodies, symptoms, or products in a serious commercial context, and that shapes attention and decision-making more than many realize.
And I also think there is a second layer to this which is structural. Many women’s health categories evolved inside reimbursement, regulatory, and adoption environments that looked harder to underwrite and harder to scale. Over time, that compounds the problem which reduces conviction even when the underlying need is enormous.
Sigh. It is a shame. I totally agree
It's so true and I’ve witnessed it first-hand now at my dad’s new healthcare startup. I make all their ppt decks and I noticed they kept removing any stats or info I put in about women. I was not gonna stop adding women examples and stats, so they finally told me that they feel uncomfortable talking about them… it's 3 white men and they usually present to women in HR. That shocked me. Not only because they're all twice my age and have wives and daughters, but because they've all had extremely successful careers in healthcare.
Exactly. This is a known problem in the femtech VC space. I understand the need for protections in certain circumstances. Like don’t talk about bodies at the regular office etc. But in an investor meeting about a product that helps women (and also the families built around them, basically everyone) these products change lives. If you wife won’t be intimate with you postpartum, if she is having a hard time in nursing, menopause, peri, etc, it affects the family. Industries have plenty of data at this point that diversifying is $$$$$$$, why are women left out when we spend the most money?
Idk its makes no logical sense to me, but they seem to ignore and/or just not care about any problems related to women. I've pointed out many bugs/holes in our platform that result in bad doctor recommendations for our women users, and sometimes they'll actually just laugh and brush it off. Other times they will act concerned, and even create a ticket, but even then 9 out of 10 times the issue/bug ain't getting resolved.. It's just absurd
Just received the book. ("What did I order from Switzerland," I wondered.) Can't wait to read it!
Thank you for this precise layer: the blind spot is also a market failure.
This is also familiarity being mistaken for neutrality. Not just in women’s health. Everywhere. What gets treated as “standard” is usually just what institutions already know how to measure, recognize, fund, or build around. Everything else gets treated as niche, complicated, unstable, or “too many variables.”
-We see it in healthcare.
-We see it in research recruitment.
-We see it in product design.
-We see it in venture capital.
And then years later, the blind spot gets rediscovered like it was invisible the whole time, when really it sat outside the worldview of the people making decisions.
Also just ordered the book :) Excited to read it!
Randi, ‘familiarity being mistaken for neutrality’ is such a powerful way to frame it.
A lot of what gets treated as ‘standard’ is simply what institutions already know how to measure, fund, and underwrite. Everything outside those frameworks can start to look niche or overly complex even when the opportunity is enormous.
And your point about the blind spot sitting in plain sight all along is exactly right.
Thank you as well for ordering the book. I really appreciate it and can’t wait for you to read it.
Why should anybody make money off of healthcare? We need a system of nationalized healthcare. Focusing on the money that could be made off of women's health is just not enough change right now.
I actually agree that healthcare should not leave people behind because they cannot afford care. But one of the uncomfortable realities is that innovation itself usually requires capital long before treatments ever reach public systems. The MRI, insulin, biologics, robotic surgery, GLP-1s — all required enormous amounts of funding, risk-taking, and infrastructure before they became widely accessible. The question the book asks is: why have some areas of healthcare attracted decades of innovation capital while others remained comparatively invisible?
Before thugs took over the federal government, a great deal of scientific research funding was provided by our government. So basically our tax dollars were working for our benefit. In fact, I live near one of the universities that did the theoretical work upon which robotic surgery is built. Their research was government funded. Let's stop acting and believing that the marketplace can do all for all. That's a fiction and it's starving Americans right now.
I agree that public funding is essential to many major healthcare breakthroughs. But just as the marketplace can’t and shouldn’t do all for all, public funding alone rarely takes innovation through to commercialization and scale. The question I explore in the book is why some areas then attract enormous amounts of follow-on capital and innovation while others remain comparatively overlooked despite clear need. Both parts of the system matter.
So because it cost a great deal to develop a treatment, that should mean that the treatment turns a profit for every single patient? The research scientists who do this work don't buy into this. There is a value above profit motive and poor people's lives don't have to be profit centers.
I had something similar happen which made me switch from children's health to women's health. An undiagnosed iron deficiency for probably most of my 40s. I had all the risk factors and symptoms but they didn't test my iron (ferritin) until I was anemic. To this day we still don't have regular screening guidelines for iron deficiency without anemia. I am actually lucky I became anemic because most women don't. Find out that anemia guidelines were made in the 60s from population data -- where men have naturally higher levels --not health outcome data. So many women-centric disease are linked to iron deficiency! So much work to be done. I'm looking forward to reading your book.
This is such an important example. Iron deficiency without anemia is one of those areas that reveals how much medicine has historically relied on narrow baselines and late-stage detection thresholds. So many women are told their labs are ‘normal’ while still experiencing very real symptoms.
Yes so sad. I believe its one of the root causes behind many of the health conditions more common in women such as depression, thyroid dysfunction, allergies, microvascular dysfunction, adverse pregnancy outcomes, restless leg syndrome and POTS. I always come back to this study done in the 1960s showing that 2/3rds of college women had absent or scant bone marrow iron. Most menstruating women are iron deficient and yet the medical system has done nothing to help them - they don't even screen for iron deficiency (ferritin) in pregnant women! https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/663748
I pre-ordered Kindle version! Thank you!!
Thank you so much Kristin 🙏🏽😘
Thank you for writing about this, it saw it pop up on my screen and clicked on it right away!
Thank you so much Leslie for your support and for being here. I appreciate you very much!
Dr. Le consulto lei que es de ayuda poder harer que las células cerebrales tengan neuroplasticidad esto es verdad!
https://substack.com/@luiseduardogarciaok/note/p-199410112?r=8hoxnv