By Ruby Raut, founder and CEO, WUKA

For years, campaigners, scientists, and brands like ours have been calling attention to a hidden issue: the chemicals, metals, and toxins found in everyday menstrual products.

At last, that conversation reached one of the most powerful rooms in the country.

In October 2025, the House of Lords hosted “Have We Reached the Tipping Point for Toxic Period Products?”, part of Environmenstrual Week led by the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN).

Bringing together politicians, scientists, NGOs, and advocates, the event asked one central question: if the evidence is already clear, what’s stopping us from protecting people who menstruate?

The Political Will Is Growing, Slowly

Baroness Natalie Bennett, former Green Party leader and long-time environmental campaigner, opened the event with characteristic honesty: progress in Westminster is real, but painfully slow.

She spoke candidly about the challenges of turning concern into regulation.

“Politics is a process, not an event,” she reminded the room. Amendments fail, votes are lost, and yet each attempt builds pressure for change.

Her remarks reflected the growing cross-party awareness that chemical safety in menstrual products is a public health issue, not a niche concern.

In the UK, these products are still classified as consumer goods, unlike in the US, where they fall under medical devices.

That distinction matters; it shapes what’s tested, what’s disclosed, and ultimately how safe products are allowed to be.

A Four-Year Window for Change

Bennett called the current moment a “rare window of opportunity.” With Emma Hardy now serving as Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs , there’s a chance to align environmental, health, and equality goals, something that hasn’t happened before.

She urged everyone in the room to act decisively over the next four years, while the government is receptive and the public momentum is strong.

This is a political sweet spot: the science is mounting, public awareness is rising, and even large brands can see that consumer trust depends on transparency.

Her message was clear: don’t let this window close without action.

Regulations for period products could mirror those for cosmetics or drinking water, where safe thresholds are continually lowered as research reveals new risks.

From Stigma to Policy

Bennett also reflected on how far the conversation has come.

She recalled going on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour in 2015 to talk about the tampon tax, when hearing party leaders say the word tampon on air was considered revolutionary.

A decade later, Westminster is not only saying the words but debating what’s inside those products.

For Bennett, normalising the language is part of dismantling the stigma. “Just use the words,” she said. “Put it out there.”

That cultural shift is as powerful as any policy change.

When menstruation is treated as a normal part of life, not a taboo, it becomes easier to discuss safety, sustainability, and rights — openly and without shame.

Coalition Building: The Real Engine of Progress

One of the most practical takeaways from the session was Bennett’s emphasis on coalition-building.

Regulation won’t happen through Parliament alone; it needs the force of public demand.

She pointed to the Women’s Institute, which has already campaigned for over a decade on microplastics, and encouraged collaboration with trade unions, community organisations, and campaign groups like WEN, PAN UK, and Natracare.

Her point was simple: the communities most affected by chemical exposure — lower-income groups, industrial workers, those living near polluted areas — are often least represented in policy rooms.

Building a coalition across environmental, feminist, and labour movements is how systemic change takes root.

Momentum, Awareness, and Responsibility

The House of Lords event marked a shift from awareness to accountability.

After years of grassroots activism and scientific evidence,  from toxic metal testing to pesticide exposure studies, the discussion has finally reached the people who can make change possible.

For those of us in the menstrual equity movement, the message was energising. We’ve come a long way since the days when period poverty was barely discussed, let alone period safety.

But as Bennett reminded everyone, politics moves at a glacial pace, and every window of opportunity must be used wisely.

Change won’t come from Parliament alone.

It will come from pressure, from consumers, campaigners, and companies who believe that safe periods are a basic human right.

Learn more about WUKA at wuka.co.uk

By Wolfgang Hackl, CEO, OncoGenomX Inc., Allschwil, Switzerland

In women’s health, “free” digital tools occupy an especially sensitive space. Period trackers, fertility apps, pregnancy platforms, menopause programs, pelvic-floor wearables, contraception reminders, mental-health chatbots and symptom diaries have become essential resources for millions worldwide. For many, these tools fill longstanding gaps in clinical care, offering information, monitoring and community.

Yet women’s health data are uniquely intimate, politically vulnerable and commercially valuable. The same apps that help a woman identify a fertility window or track post-partum mood changes may also collect sexual history, location, device IDs, hormonal patterns, and behavioral clues that can be monetized or repurposed – sometimes without meaningful transparency.

The core ethical question is urgent: When does the data exchange that underpins “free” women’s health tools empower individuals, and when does it exploit them?

Across research and policy commentary, the fault lines remain the same – transparency, proportionality, control, fair value sharing, and protection from harm – but their stakes are heightened in women’s health.

The high-risk profile of women’s health data

The sensitivity of women’s health data is not abstract. It becomes dangerous in real-world contexts:

• Reproductive rights volatility – In jurisdictions with restrictive reproductive laws, menstrual cycle data, geolocation patterns around clinics, search histories and communication logs can be weaponized.
• Stigma and discrimination – Data related to miscarriage, abortion, infertility, menopause symptoms, mental health, sexual function or domestic violence can lead to insurance denial, unfair pricing, employment impacts or social vulnerability.
• Relationship and safety risk – Some apps collect or expose data that partners or third parties could misuse, from mood logs to location traces.
• Commercial targeting – Women are historically targeted with exploitative advertising around fertility supplements, weight loss, anti-aging and alternative therapies, often amplified by intimate behavioral data.

These risks transform the ethics of “free.” When a tool’s business model depends on collecting sensitive reproductive or behavioral attributes at scale, the user is no longer the beneficiary – the user is the product.

What women expect when sharing health data

Studies consistently show broad support among women for sharing data when it drives tangible health benefits—research, better care pathways, early diagnosis, or community insights. Trust collapses when data are:

• shared with advertisers, data brokers or insurers
• used for profiling, risk scoring or targeted pricing
• stored indefinitely or without clarity
• accessible to third parties unknown to the user

Women expect three things above all:

1. Radical transparency

Not euphemisms, not hidden trackers, not 30-page terms. Women want to know who sees what, why and how it will be protected.

2. Meaningful agency

Granular control – “yes” to sharing anonymized cycle data for research, “no” to targeted ads; “yes” to contributing to public-good datasets, “no” to third-party data inference.

3. Safety guarantees

Technical and legal safeguards that explicitly prohibit uses exposing women to legal, financial, physical or psychological risk.

Women’s health is not a sandbox for broad, open-ended data collection. When platforms request permissions unrelated to their core health function – photos, contacts, continuous location, device fingerprinting – alarm bells ring.

Exploitation patterns in “free” women’s health tools

Technical audits of menstrual and fertility apps show that many collect extraordinarily detailed data: cycle length, symptoms, sexual activity, pregnancy intentions, test results, mood logs, sleep, stress, location, device IDs, email metadata, and “other information.” Some share with dozens of third parties.

The exploitation signals are increasingly well understood:

• Opaque data pipelines to marketers, analytics firms and profiling engines
• Unbounded storage of sensitive reproductive histories
• Engagement-driven design that nudges users toward disclosing more
• Commercial re-use of intimate behavioral patterns unrelated to health
• Minimal or performative governance despite high-risk categories

When a woman logs cramps or sexual activity, the ethical baseline is higher than in general wellness apps. The potential harms – legal, social, relational – are uniquely gendered and often irreversible.

Value capture and the “women pay twice” problem

Women’s health technologies have become a multi-billion-dollar market. But the value chain often flows upward, not back to the users:

1. Women supply intimate, high-granularity data – Immense value for R&D, precision marketing, and investor storytelling.
2. Companies monetize the insights – Through partnerships, advertising, risk scoring or AI model development.
3. Women then purchase the resulting products – Including paid upgrades, supplements, or premium diagnostics whose innovation was subsidized by their data.

Without mechanisms that guarantee affordability, open reporting or reinvestment into women’s health services, the model becomes extractive. Women contribute the raw material, then buy back the finished product at retail price.

Pathways to acceptable – and truly empowering – data use

Responsible data practice in women’s health requires stricter standards than generic “digital health ethics.” The following markers – derived from current scholarship—are especially critical in women’s health contexts:

1. Purpose-bound data practices

Tools should collect only what is strictly necessary for the health purpose. Fertility predictions do not require contact lists or persistent location tracking.

2. Prohibitions on harmful secondary uses

Contracts and code must explicitly block:

• insurance scoring
• law enforcement access without due process
• targeted advertising linked to reproductive data
• cross-platform tracking
• sale to data brokers

3. High-security architecture

Women’s health data should be treated like genomic or mental health data:

• encryption at rest and in transit
• zero-trust design
• independent security audits
• strict third-party access regimes

4. Governance designed for vulnerable contexts

Oversight bodies should include women’s health experts, legal scholars, and patient advocates, reviewing not just privacy compliance but real-world harm potential.

5. Fair value and reciprocity

If population-level reproductive or maternal health data fuel AI models, companies should commit to:

• affordability of products derived from those models
• investment in community health infrastructure
• transparency in data-driven improvements

This is not charity. It is ethical reciprocity.

The way forward: trust as a differentiator

Women’s health is evolving from niche to mainstream. With this visibility comes responsibility. Investors and innovators who treat data stewardship as a strategic asset – not a compliance hurdle—will define the next era of digital women’s health.

The future belongs to tools that:

• put safety ahead of scale
• align business models with women’s interests
• eliminate dark patterns
• prove that “free” does not mean “exploitative”
• create value with, not from, women

Ultimately, the line between acceptable data use and exploitation is shaped by one question:

Does this tool treat women as partners—or as data sources?

The companies that choose the former will earn the trust that defines the next generation of global women’s health innovation.

By Zahra Bhatti, founder, Véa

Women are achieving more than ever, yet many feel constantly mentally stretched and overwhelmed.

Emotional load has become the new glass ceiling.

What is Emotional Load?

Emotional load is not emotionality; it is the ongoing internal coordination of life – the feeling of carrying too much, tracking too much and anticipating too much.

It includes anticipating needs, noticing problems, remembering details, absorbing tension and managing the emotional atmosphere of others.

Sociologist Allison Daminger (2019) describes this as cognitive labour: the planning, organising and foresight that hold the fabric of daily functioning together.

Women disproportionately carry this work across cultures and industries.

They take on the psychological weight of remembering, checking in, smoothing conflict and holding the mental map of what everyone needs next.

This is layered on top of professional responsibilities and domestic expectations, forming a continuous background process that men, statistically, are less likely to absorb (ONS, 2016; Haupt et al., 2023).

The result is not busyness but fragmentation – the steady splitting of attention across competing emotional and logistical demands.

The Neuroscience Behind the Burden

The cognitive and emotional systems involved in emotional load are the same ones required for decision making, creativity and strategic thinking.

When they become overloaded, performance declines even in the most capable individuals. Working memory, the brain’s capacity to hold multiple pieces of information at once, is extremely limited. It breaks down under multitasking and rapid switching (Marois and Ivanoff, 2005).

Emotional monitoring, planning and interpersonal sensitivity draw from the same neural resources as focus and problem solving (Ochsner et al., 2012).

Emotional suppression – managing others’ emotions while sidelining one’s own – further increases cognitive fatigue (Goldin et al., 2008). Similarly, women are also biologically more reactive to relational stress.

Research indicates stronger amygdala responses to interpersonal tension (Bangasser et al., 2009) and a stress pattern known as tend-and-befriend, in which oxytocin amplifies emotional awareness rather than dampening it (Taylor et al., 2000).

In other words, women are both socially expected and biologically primed to carry a greater share of emotional responsibility. Over time, this does not simply create stress – it creates a form of cognitive erosion.

How Emotional Load Becomes a Glass Ceiling

When mental bandwidth is consistently used to manage the emotional and relational needs of others, less of it is available for the types of thinking that leadership requires: long-term planning, deep focus, innovation and strategic clarity.

High emotional load siphons the cognitive resources needed for complex problem solving (Sweller, 1988). It pushes women into organisational and interpersonal roles that maintain team functioning but carry little formal recognition.

This invisible work gradually expands until it displaces higher-leverage opportunities. Many women describe a version of burnout that is not exhaustion but depletion: being mentally full yet intellectually under-stimulated, over-functioning yet under-supported.

Studies also show women are more likely to internalise this overload, interpreting burnout as a personal failing rather than a structural imbalance (Maslach and Leiter, 2016).

Emotional exhaustion remains one of the strongest predictors of women leaving organisations altogether (Leiter and Maslach, 2009); McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, 2023).

This is the quiet barrier that does not show up in diversity reports – a barrier built not from corporate policy but from constant cognitive interruption.

Where Femtech Still Falls Short

The femtech ecosystem has made extraordinary progress but it still treats emotional and cognitive experience as peripheral.

Today we can track ovulation to the hour, optimise sleep through biometric sensors and monitor HRV daily. Yet, there is no equivalent system for understanding emotional load, cognitive fragmentation or the cumulative mental strain that shapes a woman’s day more than her steps or calories ever will.

Most wellbeing tools focus on surface-level state change – a meditation, a breathwork exercise, a quick reset. These are useful but do not resolve the deeper issue: the mind is full.

There is too much unprocessed emotional material, too many unresolved micro-tensions, too many open cognitive loops. Without integration, clarity does not return.

This gap is precisely why tools like Véa need to exist.

How Technology Can Reduce Cognitive Fragmentation

Technology cannot remove emotional load entirely but it can radically transform how women process and carry it. One of the most robust research findings in psychology is the effect of expressive writing.

Putting thoughts and emotions into words reduces amygdala activation (Lieberman et al., 2007), improves cognitive processing, decreases rumination and strengthens prefrontal regulation (Pennebaker and Smyth, 2016).

Journaling does what the overloaded mind cannot: it externalises, organises and integrates.

When combined with AI, this becomes even more powerful. AI can detect emotional patterns humans miss, surface unacknowledged stressors and nudge micro-reflections that prevent overload from building.

It can help women close mental loops before they accumulate into cognitive clutter.

Done correctly, this is not therapy mimicry but cognitive hygiene. It reduces fragmentation and restores mental bandwidth.

That restoration – not motivation, discipline or resilience – is what many women are missing.

Reframing a Key Metric in Women’s Health

If femtech is serious about advancing women’s wellbeing, it must recognise emotional load as a fundamental determinant of health, performance and possibility.

The next decade of innovation will not come from tracking more biological inputs but from understanding and reducing the cognitive and emotional burdens women carry invisibly every day.

This shift matters because capacity is not an infinite resource.

Emotional load drains the clarity women need to lead, create and thrive. Addressing it removes a barrier that has held women back quietly but powerfully. Women do not need more advice on balance – they need more mental space.

Femtech has transformed how we care for the body.

The next transformation is caring for the mind. This is the problem Véa was built to solve: helping women process, integrate and offload the cognitive and emotional weight that has gone unrecognised for far too long.

Learn more about Véa at veajournal.app/

References

Bangasser, D.A., Eck, S.R. and Ordoñes Sanchez, E. (2019). ‘Sex differences in stress reactivity in arousal and attention systems’, Neuropsychopharmacology, 44(1), pp. 129–139. doi: 10.1038/s41386-018-0137-2.

Daminger, A. (2019). ‘The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor’, American Sociological Review, 84(4), pp. 609–633.

Goldin, P.R., McRae, K., Ramel, W. and Gross, J.J. (2007). ‘The Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation: Reappraisal and Suppression of Negative Emotion’, Biological Psychiatry, 63(6), pp. 577–586.

Haupt, A. and Gelbgiser, D. (2023). ‘The gendered division of cognitive household labor, mental load, and family–work conflict in European countries’, European Societies, 26(3), pp. 828–854.

Leiter, M.P. and Maslach, C. (2009). ‘Nurse turnover: the mediating role of burnout’, Journal of Nursing Management, 17(3), pp. 351–359.

Leiter, M.P. and Maslach, C. (2016). ‘Understanding the Burnout Experience: Recent Research and Its Implications for Psychiatry’, World Psychiatry, 15(2), pp. 103–111.

Lieberman, M.D., Eisenberger, N.I., Crockett, M.J., Tom, S.M., Pfeifer, J.H. and Way, B.M. (2007). ‘Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli’, Psychological Science, 18(5), pp. 421–428.

McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. (2023). Women in the Workplace 2023. Available at: https://womenintheworkplace.com/ (Accessed: 1st December 2025).

Marois, R. and Ivanoff, J. (2005). ‘Capacity limits of information processing in the brain’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(6), pp. 296–305.

Ochsner, K.N. and Gross, J.J. (2008). ‘Cognitive Emotion Regulation: Insights from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), pp. 153–158.

Office for National Statistics. (2016). Women shoulder the responsibility of unpaid work. London: ONS. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/womenshouldertheresponsibilityofunpaidwork/2016-11-10#:~:text=Women%20carry%20out%20an%20overall,to%20cooking%2C%20childcare%20and%20housework (Accessed: 1st December 2025).

Pennebaker, J.W. and Smyth, J.M. (2016). Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain. New York: Guilford Press.

Sweller, J. (1988). ‘Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on learning’, Cognitive Science, 12(2), pp. 257–285.

Taylor, S.E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B.P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, R.A. and Updegraff, J.A. (2000). ‘Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight’, Psychological Review, 107(3), pp. 411–429.