Why underfunding women's health is an issue; Stop blaming women for falling birth rates; Should menopause be optional?; The future of smart hospital + more
Biweekly newsletter about the latest news and updates on innovation and diversity in wearable tech, health tech, and femtech space.
Happy Monday everyone! 🙂
This month, in honor of International Women’s Day and Month, for us at WoW it’s all about women and celebrating femininity and female power! 👭💪🏽🚀
The technology industry—or at least its largest players—will likely continue to close the gender gap this year. Deloitte Global predicts that large global technology firms, on average, will reach nearly 33% overall female representation in their workforces in 2022, up slightly more than 2 percentage points from 2019. A 2-percentage-point increase, though small, actually represents notable progress.
Moving the needle is difficult, and even aggressive campaigns to recruit, hire, retain, and promote women have been found to work slowly. But while this progress is a step in the right direction, going forward, tech companies may need to work even harder to improve these numbers.
With research showing that diverse teams perform better and are more innovative, leaders across industries recognize that a diverse workforce—by gender, race, age, and other social factors—is good for business. As the tech industry seeks to shape a prosperous future for itself, it is aiming to be more representative of that future.
When it comes to female health space, something we are very passionate about, this month we will be discussing topics that haven’t gotten much recognition in the previous years.
For far too long, the medical sciences have treated men and women as interchangeable subjects, favoring men’s health for funding and the male body for study. This approach creates a problem, not just for women but everyone. Not only are we missing a large and critical slice of the population, but we are also leaving an unknown amount of science unexplored.
What’s more, by underfunding the study of women’s health issues, we’ve left a tremendous amount of money on the table. In fact, in nearly three-quarters of cases where a disease primarily effects one gender, the so-called “men’s diseases” are overfunded, while the “women’s diseases” are dramatically underfunded. Even a slight increase in capital invested in basic research into women’s health would unleash staggering returns that would capture the attention of anyone on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley. We can’t know what we’re missing if we aren’t even paying attention to it—so how might things look different if we were to start improving funding for research into women’s health, even slightly more than we currently fund it?
Join us this Thursday for another webinar from our FemTech Untapped program, where we will be discussing some of the topics that certainly deserve to get more awareness, recognition, and above all - funding. 500+ people already registered! 🥳
Many thanks to our program partners FemTec Health and Goodwin, for supporting this event and our femtech program! 🥰
Find out more about Curiva, AOA and Syrona Health from our interviews with the founders of all three startups published on our blog ➡️ WoW women blogs!
We have also featured companies participating at this event along with some other innovative startups in our recent blog post, check it out below! 👇🏽
Follow us on Eventbrite to stay up to date with all our future events and meetups! Link here.
Interested in joining us for one of our future webinars or you would like to discuss partnership and collaboration? Get in touch!
🔥 Become a WoW member to learn from and connect with our community of entrepreneurs, designers, and technologists, leverage valuable resources, and discover career opportunities! All our members get free access to all our events and other resources, including ones in the FemTech Untapped program!
➡️ Follow us on Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram / Facebook.
🧑🏫 Join our LinkedIn femtech group with 1,000+ members where we discuss all things women’s health, femtech innovation, and investment.
📆 Check out our events page.
📧 Get in touch if you’d like to become our partner and promote your company in this newsletter!
📌 If you are a female founder, designer, or technologist, we would love to feature you on our WoW women blog!
WoW community events, news, and updates 💻🌎📆
📆 Join us on March 22, 12pm-1pm GMT, for another femtech webinar organised by our members Barclays Eagle Labs, where four inspirational forward-thinking individuals will be discussing the future of the femtech industry. You’ll have the opportunity to hear from each speaker and their experience, followed by a panel discussion about the current state of the nation, why the FemTech sector has seen substantial growth, the challenges faced, the investment landscape and what the future looks like. Register here.
📆 Join us on March 22 for the Women in Business Panel event, 6pm-9pm GMT, organised by our member Seedrs in collaboration with Virgin StartUp! At the event, you’ll be able to hear from some of the UK’s brightest entrepreneurs and experts in the field of financing your business, shining a light on the women founders up and down the UK who’re building incredible startups. Book your ticket here.
🚶🏽♀️ Join our members from the Clementine and Bugaboo in their The Mind Powered Walking Club, a virtual group walk - live. The group walk will be guided by Clementine Mindset Coach who will lead the group walk and guide you through a transformational ‘mind powered walk’. You’ll get a chance to shake off stuff that might be weighing you down, leaving you feeling more motivated and positive to cope with whatever life throws at you. Register here.
👏🏽 Our member Michelle Caira has just launched her startup ViviRocks! It's a fitness and wellness platform for women and covers preconception to postpartum and perimenopause to post-menopause. In one place you can get great, science-backed content, personal training, and an online gym. Membership is free for the Vivi membership - and offers fitness, health, and wellness content plus an online gym. There is also a VIP membership - which includes small group cohorts and a personal training plan. Find out more here.
💼 Our member company OncoGenomX is a Swiss-based company that empowers diagnostic units at comprehensive breast cancer centers with the first-of-its-kind guidance tool to determine the most efficacious treatment for durable metastasis prevention. Aiming to build a diverse leadership team, they are looking to supplement the expertise and skills already on board with proven finance and business administration expertise. If you are interested to learn more about the opportunity and want to be a part of an innovation that redefines clinical decision support, please contact their team at info@oncogenomx.ch.
💼 Our members Melloh Wellness are looking for a Chief Subscription Officer to join their team and take ownership over establishing and growing the subscription business, shape their online presence and improve customer acquisition across key channels. Find out more + apply via this link.
💪🏽 Our members AlbionVC, in partnership with Arctic Shores, offer startup founders personal leadership discovery. How? Access this tool to understand yourself. It’s scientific, engaging, and behavioural based. Watch the video with Jane Reddin, Talent Director AlbionVC, who is on a mission to make founder leadership development accessible to all entrepreneurs. Register here if you would like to participate in the #FoundToLead project!
📆 Join our friends from FemTech Focus for their virtual Jobs Fair, on Wednesday, March 23rd, 12-3pm EST. Register HERE or at www.femtechfocus.org, candidates are FREE to attend, while hiring companies are requested to pay a small fee '(use code WOW20 for 20% off).
🔥 SOSV, one of the largest and the most active venture funds in the world, published The SOSV Human Health 100 report. There are several femtech companies included, and one of them is amma pregnancy tracker, our member company! Congrats! 🥳
💌 Archeology of 0 to 1 is a special column of TILT newsletter where our member Alessandra Scicchitano, Ph.D. regularly researches the early history of famous products trying to summarise repeatable learnings. Sign up here!
🚀 For their second program Tech4Eva received 124 applications! Come celebrate this success with us and other partners of the program on March 31st at the opening ceremony at the Rolex Learning Center (event will be hybrid, for those who cannot attend in person), and discover the selected start-ups and projects that will join Tech4Eva program. Register here.
Industry news, and updates 💻🌎📆
Telehealth visits now available through Amazon Alexa
FDA clears first smartphone app for insulin delivery
Charting female founders' standout year for VC exits
The Future of Smart Hospital Strategy Brings Care to the Home
Putting the ‘A’ in STEM: Why the arts is vital for future sci-tech success
Mushroom leather, fermented silk: How can fashion brands help next-gen materials scale up?
Women 32% more likely to die after operation by male surgeon, study reveals
7 entrepreneurs on a mission to improve Black maternal health care
Decades After the Pill, Another Revolution for Women’s Health
Women Aren't Cared For Like Men — and It's Killing Them
Thanks for reading this newsletter, next one will land in your inbox on Monday, 28 March. 📧
If you wish to send us feedback or have a question, email us, we would love to hear from you! 🥰