FemTech: From an uncomfortable subject to a 50-billion dollar industry
The invention of the pill in the 1960s helped pave the way towards social equality for men and women by giving women the ability to control child birth. With the birth of FemTech about 70 years later, we are witnessing the next big leap. FemTech is helping to more evenly distribute between partners what seemed to be the woman’s sole responsibility to reduce unwanted pregnancies. It has taken topics such as PMS, periods and cyclical irregularities out of the taboo zone. We are moving into a brave new world, where the biological reality of 49.5% of the population is seen as a topic that matters. Something that should be measured, understood and taught. Read the full gripping article by Else Feikje van der Berg in the new issue of sisterMAG.
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FemTech: From an uncomfortable subject to a 50-billion dollar industry
A glance at the FemTech space from its start in 2015 until today and an outlook on what’s next
The invention of the pill in the 1960s helped pave the way towards social equality for men and women by giving women the ability to control child birth. With the birth of FemTech about 70 years later, we are witnessing the next big leap. FemTech is helping to more evenly distribute between partners what seemed to be the woman’s sole responsibility to reduce unwanted pregnancies. It has taken topics such as PMS, periods and cyclical irregularities out of the taboo zone. We are moving into a brave new world, where the biological reality of 49.5% of the population is seen as a topic that matters. Something that should be measured, understood and taught.
The term FemTech was coined in 2015 by Ida Tin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tin), co-founder and CEO of Clue, a fertility-tracker app. It’s defined as a category of software, diagnostics, products, and services that use technology often to focus on women’s health (1) or more simply put: technology geared towards improving women’s lives (2). The term stretches out over a wide range of products (3) and problems to solve, including women’s sexual wellness, fertility solutions, period trackers, pelvic healthcare, pregnancy and nursing care, general female healthcare, period care goods and at-home fertility monitoring devices.
So why did it take us so long to finally start talking about these undeniable truths for half the world’s population? Why this decades-long blackout on information and data about female health? Why the 70-year gap between discovering hormonal birth control as a one-size-fits-all solution for female fertility (partially ignoring the effect that taking hormones can have on the female body and mind) and taking strides towards replacing hormonal birth control?
»Female leadership in tech: small steps forward«
In today’s tech space, innovation is driven by fast-moving start-ups which detect a problem – often a problem the founders are faced with themselves – and can offer a solution. According to the Women in Technology Leadership 2019 (4) report by SilliconValleyBank, only 56% of start-ups in the US, the UK, China and Canada had at least one woman in an executive position. Forty per cent had at least one woman sitting on the board of directors. The report euphemistically calls these results “sobering”. Start-ups often find their financial backing in venture capitalists: 92% of partners at the largest VCs in the USA are male (5). No wonder that female health – a topic considered to be either uncomfortable, already solved or “niche” – was not detected as a problem requiring a solution.
Times they are changing (albeit slowly). With the ratio of female leaders in the tech world increasing bit by bit (for instance, in the US the ratio of women in the board of directors climbed from 30% to 38% over the past two years (6), problems only faced by women are slowly entering the main stage. The successes of companies active in the FemTech space have inspired leaders and investors of all sexes to finally see this industry for what it’s worth. Women are not a niche group; they are an audience willing to spend 29% more per capita on healthcare (7) compared to their male counterparts. In 2018 over 400 million dollars were invested into FemTech companies (8), the market potential on a global level has been estimated to grow to a whopping 50 billion dollars by the year 2025 (9).
»Give and take«
As for the second “why”, which is about data collection, the answer can be found on the FDA’s ban on women participating in drug testing, which was only lifted in 1993 (10). Though the reason for this ban – the protection of unborn fetuses – was certainly defendable, the FDA realized that by not investigating the impact of drugs on females, a huge gap was left in scientific research. The lack of data on female health is an important problem which requires a solution, and FemTech can help. Through clear, honest data privacy policies (11), FemTech companies can go beyond educating their users and helping them understand their bodies based on what we know today. It can actually extend knowledge by providing huge data-sets to scientific institutions. Clue currently works with the Max Planck Society, Colombia University and Stanford University to further research on many important topics (12), such as psychological changes around ovulation and pain patterns and disease prediction.
»A new right to choose: Replacing hormonal birth control«
But can FemTech replace hormonal birth control? Currently: Not really. Natural Cycles, an app which predicts women’s fertility largely based on the BBT method (Basal Body Temperature Method) became the first FDA-approved birth control app (13) after investigations into claims of unwanted pregnancies having been caused by the app were launched in Sweden and the UK (14).
The trick is in the definitions. The FDA explains it’s approval by stating that no method of birth control is 100% failsafe. Natural Cycles claims (15) that their app is 93% effective under “typical use” and 99% effective under “perfect use”. The app can be as safe as hormonal birth control for a subset of women who have regular cycles and who use the app “perfectly”: measuring their body temperature every day at the same time, adding all relevant datapoints and abstaining from vaginal intercourse or using condoms during “red days”. Since many women have less predictable cycles and less strict, consistent regiments or schedules, so far hormonal birth control remains the “safer” way to avoid pregnancy.
We are only at the starting point, however. We are talking about a space that was only deemed worthy of its own name since 2015. FemTech start-ups managed to raise 1.1 billion dollars between 2014 and 2017 (16), the industry is estimated to grow to 50 billion dollars by 2025. We ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of innovation.
