Editor’s comment: Women’s health investment surges – but is it enough?

There’s a sense of momentum in women’s health right now. In the span of just weeks, major new funds have been announced, mobilising hundreds of millions of dollars for maternal health, reproductive rights, and research into conditions that disproportionately affect women. It feels like the shift the sector has been waiting for, but the real test is what comes next.

In recent weeks, the investment powerhouse Iconiq Impact announced the launch of the Women’s Health Co-Lab, created in partnership with Co-Impact and supported by Melinda French Gates, her daughters Jennifer Gates Nassar and Phoebe Gates, alongside fourteen other donors, including Iconiq co-founder Divesh Makan and his wife Diksha.

The collaborative philanthropic fund aims to improve the health and agency of women and girls worldwide, focusing on maternal health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender-based violence.

Early grantees include Every Mother Counts, founded by Christy Turlington Burns, which will work to strengthen healthcare delivery systems, Americans for Contraception to expand access to care, and Ujamaa Africa to tackle patriarchal norms and policy reform.

It comes following another major initiative announced by French Gates, in September, whose Pivotal Ventures group has joined non-profit Wellcome Leap to pledge US$100m to launch two programmes addressing underfunded areas such as women’s mental health and autoimmune disorders.

The new money is expected to fund two programmes, due to start in 2026, and is part of Leap’s wider mission to mobilise US$1bn in philanthropic capital.

Already, US$150m has seeded work on reducing stillbirths, halving women’s lifetime risk of Alzheimer’s, and accelerating diagnosis for heavy menstrual bleeding.

It’s an impressive commitment, but is it enough?

Philanthropy alone cannot undo decades of systemic bias in women’s health and society more broadly.

Money matters, but it cannot automatically dismantle the structural barriers that prevent innovation from reaching women in the first place.

Women’s health companies continue to encounter blocks and bottlenecks hindering their success.

Investment in femtech is still only around one to two per cent of total health tech funding, while the Guardian reports that only four per cent of new medical technology drugs related to female-specific conditions were approved in the US between 2011 and 2021.

Even once companies have overcome the barriers to bringing a product to market, they face additional challenges that those targeting men’s health do not.

Research by CensHERship shows that expert-led content on menopause and reproductive health is frequently blocked or flagged as “adult” or “political.”

Meanwhile, the Center for Intimacy Justice reported this year that 84 per cent of women’s health businesses had ads rejected on Meta, restrictions which don’t appear to be placed on the equivalent men’s health products.

So, what is the solution?

Progress will not come from billion-dollar pledges alone, however welcome they may be.

Real change requires structural reform in how research is prioritised, how regulation recognises women’s health needs, and how technology platforms amplify women’s voices.

This work is slower, harder, and less headline-grabbing.

It won’t be achieved by one-off cash injections from the one per cent, but by the steady, often invisible work of founders, advocates, investors, and healthcare providers who refuse to accept the status quo.

That is where our optimism should lie, not only in the big gestures, but in the cumulative power of small, determined steps toward a better future for women’s health.