Whether emerging, growing or an advanced economy, it is important to invest in women’s health. This is because it will go a long way in reducing associated healthcare costs while utilising the existing healthcare services to benefit everyone in society.
According to historical research, most health studies were conducted on men. This was without considering the aspect of sex-based differences. Therefore, there were cases where some medication were less effective on women than they were on men. That is why now is the opportune time to think about how we approach women’s health radically.
What about Femtech?
Femtech is an entity that covers a host of things, including genetic testing that functions to test endometriosis likelihood, period trackers and other types of fertility disorders. With the greater emphasis on everything to do with women’s health and empowerment, there has been increased use of technology to improve women’s life experience and help them resolve any of their problems.
That is why different organisations in the sector use various aspects of technology and innovation to come up with healthcare solutions and products tailored to work for women. Furthermore, the premise behind this faction is further from amassing huge profits. The underlying objective here is to solve women related problems. That is why the process of any product development plus validation has to incorporate women to ensure their efficacy.
The demand boost for female tech is mostly attributed to the far reaching awareness in regard to the burden of infectious and chronic diseases worldwide. Also, it can be attributed to the ever growing attention focused on sexual empowerment and reproductive health of relevant women, especially ins such economies as India. On the other hand, the growth in the presence of women human resource in the technical arena also plays a pivotal role in developing technologically innovative healthcare, including women’s hygiene solutions.
The growth of these start-ups
Today, there are over 200 of such start-ups worldwide. Out of these. Women spearhead a good percentage of them. The target areas are pregnancy, hygiene, sexual health, menstruation and infant care, among other things.
In many developing countries, women’s needs and rights are largely neglected. The rise of good female tech and awareness and their products has been instrumental in transforming women’s quality of life. Most of these developing countries experience vast urban-rural divide, social taboos and demographic issues, which are main causes of asymmetric access across these regions.
When it comes to menstruation, birth control, fertility, intimate hygiene and sexual wellness, there is no much awareness because the discussion of such topics is considered a social taboo, especially for relevant women. But with the entry of different female tech brands has been vital in welcoming a new era of affordable and accessible solutions that are designed to benefit women in both rural and urban environments.
Why you should care about?
First things first. You have to realise that women constitute more than 50% of the global population. Furthermore, women are a uniquely empowered lot, especially in terms of consumption. You shouldn’t be surprised when you hear things like women run the world. This is because, like in the US, they constitute about 72% of the country’s consumption, either directly or indirectly. This is as contended by Harvard Business Review.
This about this; women are the ones who constitute about 85% of consumer purchases. Furthermore, they control about $20 billion annual consumer spending on a global scale. This figure could climb well above $28 trillion in the next half a decade.
Keeping this in mind, plus the fact that female technology has been largely unexplored until recently, it is safe to say that this sector is ripe for disruption. It is clear that most of the start-ups have seen proliferation only recently. It isn’t easy to find one that is more than 10 years old. Now people have started coming to their sense and taking up this space and giving it the appreciation it deserves.
Looking at the bigger picture, especially in relation to gender parity, female tech is something that you should care about. It is only befitting that people worldwide should care enough to embrace diversity, especially as a guiding factor and staying committed to inclusion wherever organisation they are in.
On a more microscopic scale, this also means offering more opportunities for women, especially in health. More investors should become more receptive to women’s health issues to enable the sector to gain traction. To this end, most women investors are now positioning themselves in the sector because of their intuitive understanding of women’s health issues and they can relate on various standpoints.
In a nutshell
The technological trends, especially in regard to women’s health as observed in this point, will be a win-win for all the stakeholders in matters relating to women’s health, especially in the post-pandemic era. Therefore, these start-ups are strategically placed to benefit if they remain true to their cause and continue enhancing services and products designed to empower women and improve their health.
Therefore, all sectors should work collaboratively to source diverse global and eliminate any bias related to women’s health, either in patient demographics or the health care sector.
