FemTech, a term coined by Ida Tin, refers to technology addressing the needs specific to people with female biology. At its core, FemTech aims to humanise technology through women’s lived experiences and empower them through a better understanding of their bodies.
Women are heavily underrepresented in medical research, especially considering that they were not included in clinical trials until 1993. This presents a gender gap in medical knowledge and a data gap surrounding key aspects of women’s health, including menstruation, fertility, and menopause. As a result, women’s health within the technology sector remains undervalued, underfunded, and under-innovated. Many diseases present differently in men and women, and these gaps highlight the need for more inclusive research and more responsive products and services.
Ida Tin, founder of the period-tracking app Clue, created a platform which allows users to monitor their cycles alongside symptoms such as mood, energy levels, and eating habits. In 2016, she coined the term FemTech, helping to legitimise women’s health within the technology and investment sectors. When pitching Clue to predominantly male investors, she often faced discomfort and dismissal, with many viewing menstruation as niche or awkward to discuss, despite it being a routine biological process experienced for at least 40 years of a woman’s life.
Launching a FemTech startup comes with significant barriers. Male-dominated investor networks often show scepticism, shaped by funding biases and stigma surrounding women’s health topics, as well as uncertainty about user responses to new products. The term FemTech has helped bridge this gap by giving investors a clearer category and reassuring them of the sector’s legitimacy. This single label opened the door to hundreds of startups, billions in investment, and a new wave of visibility for women’s health issues, introducing a cultural shift that demonstrates the power of naming and recognition.
Clue was created as a new type of birth control method that uses data about hormonal cycles, rather than suppressing them through hormonal pills. Today, Clue has over 11 million users in more than 190 countries, and in 2021, it became the first data-driven birth control method to receive FDA approval. Ida Tin founded Clue after becoming frustrated by the lack of effective, side-effect-free options for managing this aspect of life. Having experienced significant side effects from the contraceptive pill herself, she set out to find a more empowering alternative by using our phones to track and interpret menstrual and hormonal data to support millions of women globally. Tin even trialled the app during her own first pregnancy, further shaping Clue’s development.
The FemTech industry will be worth an estimated $1.186 trillion by 2027, according to forecasts by the non-profit organisation FemTech Focus, with this market tackling 97 health conditions that disproportionately affect women, including menopause, bone health, abortion, brain health, cardiovascular and reproductive health.
What began as a simple app has now opened the door to a wave of technological innovation, with several promising products currently in development. Qvin, for example, is introducing the Q-Pad, which is a diagnostic menstrual pad that uses biomarkers in menstrual blood to enable non-invasive disease detection and monitoring. The fluid’s unique cytokine and tissue-specific signatures hold diagnostic potential for conditions such as endometriosis and adenomyosis. Another start-up, Levelzero, is developing a wearable device equipped with cutting-edge DNA-based sensors to provide real-time hormone monitoring, offering personalised insights and treatment options.
On the flipside, some critics argue that FemTech may not be purely liberating for women’s health but instead risks turning women’s bodies into continuous data streams for commercial gain. This raises important ethical questions around privacy and consent of intimate biological information – issues that become increasingly relevant as the industry expands.
Having said that, FemTech remains a highly promising and rapidly evolving area of innovation, with the potential to transform women’s health research and clinical care. By giving women deeper, data-driven insights into their own bodies, these technologies can empower individuals to better understand, monitor, and manage their health in everyday life.
