Rewriting the Future of Women’s Health
Written by Anastasiya Rozenbaum and Kyra Ungerleider
Women’s health represents one of the largest yet most overlooked and underfunded opportunities in healthcare.
Despite comprising half of the global population, women remain systematically underserved in biomedical research and innovation. A recent Lancet publication marking International Women’s Day 2026, “Why investing in women’s health is a societal imperative” highlights that this disparity is deeply multifaceted [1]. It is driven by historical biases, societal stigma, limited awareness, and misaligned capital allocation, and may be further exacerbated by the underrepresentation of women among policymakers, healthcare leaders, innovators, and investors.
For decades, women have been excluded from clinical trials, leaving much of modern medicine rooted in male physiology [2]. Despite policy efforts, including clear initiatives introduced by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the 1990s, many clinical trials still fail to include adequate female representation or report sex-disaggregated outcomes [3].
This matters. Biological sex fundamentally shapes disease risk, progression, and response to treatment and inaction by many stakeholders means that serious disparities in health outcomes between men and women persist. This means that women spend around 25% more of their lives in poor health compared to men, with much of this burden occurring earlier in life, from menarche to menopause, and that an estimated 75 million years of healthy life are lost globally each year [4, 5].
The disparity highlights a striking imbalance and illustrates both the depth of unmet need and the significant opportunity for innovation.
Yet investment patterns continue to fail to reflect this reality. Although private investment in women’s health has tripled since 2019, it still represents only around 2–6% of total healthcare venture capital, depending on the sector and only about 2% of overall healthcare research and innovation spending is directed toward female-specific conditions beyond oncology [4, 2]. According a 2026 WEF Report, the gap becomes even more pronounced in health technology, where women’s health companies captured just 2% of the $41.2 billion invested in digital health in recent years. Even among leading pharmaceutical and medtech companies, women’s health remains an uneven subject of engagement and a marginal strategic priority for most [5].
At the same time, the field of women’s health itself has been narrowly defined, historically confined to female-specific conditions and, within this scope, largely centred on fertility. This means that research trends overlook how ovarian function and reproductive ageing shape women’s health across the life course [6]. As a result, key life stages, particularly pregnancy and menopause, remain under-researched and poorly funded [1].
One area in which we can see the consequences play out clearly is in cardiovascular health: despite long-established links between menopause and increased cardiovascular risk (since at least 1996), and the fact that cardiovascular disease is a one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in women, the age of menopause remains largely absent from risk prediction models [7]. And this lack of recognition is clear in funding too. In the realm of private sector investment in the US, between 2020 and 2025, only 11 deals were recorded, totalling $10 million, less than 0.01% of overall cardiovascular funding [5]. This represents a major missed opportunity to develop solutions in areas responsible for a significant disease burden.
The ripple effects are also evident in care delivery. In the US, just 1% of NIH funding was allocated to OBGYN departments in 2018 [8]. As a result, care often prioritises symptom management, through hormonal suppression, analgesics, or invasive procedures such as removing of ovaries through hysterectomy, rather than addressing underlying causes [9]. Conditions like endometriosis still take 5 to 12 years to diagnose, often requiring multiple clinical consultations [10] and inconsistent reimbursement limits equitable access and slows market development. Structural barriers like this continue to constrain progress.
Yet we also know what is possible when we address these kinds of barriers. Take the example we find in the evolution of in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Since the first IVF birth in 1978 — pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Sir Robert Edwards, who spent much of his career at the University of Cambridge — more than 13 million children have been born through assisted reproductive technologies [5]. Expanded insurance coverage, through state policies, employer-sponsored benefits, and public funding, has reduced out-of-pocket costs, unlocked demand, and enabled the sector to scale into a global industry.
The lesson is clear: when policy, reimbursement, and capital align, innovation can scale, transforming patient outcomes and unlocking market potential.
We should, therefore, be hopeful. And despite the challenges, momentum for reshaping the future of women’s health is building. Blended finance approaches - which combine public, donor, and private capital - are emerging to de-risk investment and philanthropic capital is scaling rapidly. Just last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $2.5 billion to accelerate women’s health R&D. This marks the largest commitment in its history to this field [5]. At the same time, leaders such as Carolee Lee, founder of Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM), are on a mission to accelerating research and investment in women’s health and demonstrate the wide reaching effects of such action. At the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, WHAM estimated in their 2026 Report that the women’s health market will grow from $45.5 billion to $58 billion by 2029, with every $1 invested generating a $40 return.
Critically, WHAM highlights that advancing women’s health will require coordinated action across sectors and a fundamental shift in definition, from a narrow focus on female-specific conditions to a broader understanding of diseases that affect women differently or disproportionately. Women account for 60–70% of dementia cases, nearly 80% of autoimmune diseases, and clearly often present differently in cardiovascular disease [11–14]. The implications of continuing to neglect these realities are profound. In fact, in addition to life long health and welfare, closing the women’s health gap could add $1 trillion annually to the global economy by 2040 [4], while unlocking a $360 billion “ghost market”, suppressed not by lack of demand but by structural under-recognition [15].
Women’s health is not just a societal imperative — it is one of the most under-leveraged opportunities in modern healthcare, offering a rare opportunity to drive both transformative health outcomes and substantial economic growth.
Encouragingly, a new generation of innovators is already reshaping this landscape.
In Part II, we explore how emerging start-ups, from Cambridge to Silicon Valley, are redefining the future of women’s health. Stay tuned!
References:
1. Bijloo, I., de Smit, N. S., Yarde, F., Hehenkamp, W. J., van Vilsteren, C., Khor, D. Z., ... & Huirne, J. A. (2026). Why investing in women's health is a societal imperative. The Lancet, 407(10532), 926-929.
2. McKinsey Health Institute. (2025). Blueprint to close the women’s health gap: How to improve lives and economies for all.McKinsey & Company
3. Bastian-Pétrel, K., et al. (2024). Sex and gender bias in chronic coronary syndromes research: Analysis of studies used to inform the 2019 European Society of Cardiology guidelines. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 45, 101041. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2024.101041
4. Ellingrud K, Pérez L, Petersen A, Sartori V. Closing the women’s health gap: a $1 trillion opportunity to improve lives and economies: insight report January 2024. World Economic Forum, 2024.
5. World Economic Forum. (2026). Women’s health investment outlook. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum.
6. Traub, M. L., & Santoro, N. (2010). Reproductive aging and its consequences for general health. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1204(1), 179-187.
7. van der Schouw, Y. T., van der Graaf, Y., Steyerberg, E. W., Eijkemans, M. J., & Banga, J. D. (1996). Age at menopause as a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality. The Lancet, 347(9003), 714-718.
8. Rice, L. W., Cedars, M. I., Sadovsky, Y., Siddiqui, N. Y., Teal, S. B., Wright, J. D., ... & Del Carmen, M. G. (2020). Increasing NIH funding for academic departments of obstetrics and gynecology: a call to action. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 223(1), 79-e1.
9. Kho KA, Chen JS, Halvorson LM. Diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment of adenomyosis. JAMA 2021; 326: 177–78.
10. De Corte, P., Klinghardt, M., von Stockum, S., & Heinemann, K. (2025). Time to diagnose endometriosis: current status, challenges and regional characteristics—a systematic literature review. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 132(2), 118-130.
11. Pinho-Gomes, A. C., Gong, J., Harris, K., Woodward, M., & Carcel, C. (2022). Dementia clinical trials over the past decade: Are women fairly represented? BMJ Neurology Open, 4(2), e000261.
12. Desai, M. K., & Brinton, R. D. (2019). Autoimmune disease in women: Endocrine transition and risk across the lifespan. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 10, 265.
13. Colafella, K. M. M., & Denton, K. M. (2018). Sex-specific differences in hypertension and associated cardiovascular disease. Nature Reviews Nephrology, 14(3), 185-201.
14. Manfrini O, Tousoulis D, Antoniades C, et al. Sex and gender differences in coronary pathophysiology and ischaemic heart disease. Eur Heart J 2026; published online Jan 23.
15. Amboy Street Ventures. (2025). The ghost market: Neglected women’s health opportunities.
Anastasiya Rozenbaum is pursuing an MPhil in Translating Medical Devices and Advanced Therapies at the School of Clinical Medicine. She conducts cardiovascular imaging research at The Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Heart & Lung Research Institute, with a focus on precision medicine and women’s cardiovascular health. She holds an MSc in Cardiovascular Medicine with distinction and has conducted cutting-edge biomedical and bioengineering research across the Netherlands, Oxford, and Cambridge. Anastasiya is also the Founder and Chair of King’s Healthcare Society and has led global health initiatives to advance maternal and pediatric care in Ethiopia. She also founded STEM mentorship programs supporting girls from underserved communities. Her contributions to health innovation and social impact have been recognised through multiple national and international awards, including the Dutch Heart Foundation, the European Commission, and Prince Bernhard Scholarship.
Kyra Ungerleider is the Founding Scientist at OvartiX, a biotech company pioneering ovary-centric drug discovery for women's reproductive health. With over 10 years of experience in longevity and DNA damage research, she holds a PhD in Clinical Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. Kyra previously served as a Cancer Research Training Award Fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where she specialized in cellular senescence and DNA damage response mechanisms. She is now leveraging her expertise in high-throughput CRISPR and small-molecule screening to develop novel therapeutics for conditions that disproportionately or uniquely affect women, including PCOS, infertility, and ovarian aging.