Did you know that until 1993, women weren’t required to participate in clinical trials? That means until just a few decades ago, many medications prescribed to women may not have been tested on a woman.
Unfortunately, this fact isn’t actually all that surprising when looking at the field of Women’s Health and the glacial pace of progress over the last half century. Despite making up half the population, women are still chronically underrepresented in medical research and disproportionately affected by underfunded health conditions.
Healthcare and quality of life should not be determined by gender. But when it comes to funding for research and innovation in women’s health, all too often it is. The ongoing gender bias in funding, particularly toward women-led startups, is putting real lives and well-being at risk.
The Silent Cost of Gender Bias in Health Research
Women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health or with disabilities than men. Yet medical research continues to skew toward gender-neutral or male-preferred health conditions, leaving women-specific issues under-researched and poorly understood.
From Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis to postpartum depression and autoimmune disorders, conditions that primarily affect women are not getting the attention or funding they deserve. Women are the least medically researched demographic, and as a result, many standard medical treatments don’t work as effectively for them. In fact, several “gender-neutral” interventions are significantly less effective when used on women. For instance:
- Between 2004 and 2013, women in the United States suffered more than 2 million drug-related adverse events, compared with just 1.3 million for men, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
- A special report from the US General Accounting Office found that, of the ten drugs removed from the US market between 1997 and 2000, eight were withdrawn because of side effects that occurred only, or mainly, in women.
- Studies show that Black patients are significantly less likely to be prescribed pain medication and that they generally receive lower doses of it when they are.
The Glaring Gap in Women’s Healthcare Echoes Throughout Her Life
The lack of attention on women’s health has real consequences. Correlations between untreated or mismanaged women’s health issues and later-life chronic conditions are growing, even more so for women of color. The state of women’s health is becoming a health crisis in slow motion, one that starts with birth and compounds throughout a woman’s life.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in maternal healthcare. Childbirth is one of the most intense physical, hormonal, and emotional experiences a person can go through. And yet, postpartum maternal health concerns like postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), postpartum anxiety (PPA), and postpartum depression (PPD) are dramatically under-researched. Rates of these conditions are rising, yet research funding and innovation in postpartum care remain stagnant.
The VC Gap: Why Women Can’t Get Funded to Fix Women’s Problems
Women-led startups, especially in the healthcare space, face an uphill battle when it comes to funding. Venture capitalists consistently overlook women founders despite being the people most acutely aware of health solutions for women.
Why is this the case? Because the VC world is deeply biased. A startling 26.9% of VC investors admitted they think women’s participation in founding teams is overrated. Another 15.3% say women are poor entrepreneurs. And 11.9% openly state they wouldn’t invest in women-led ventures at all.
Even worse, post-2020 investment trends show that VCs are favoring late-stage, low-risk investments, meaning early-stage, women-led companies are left out in the cold.
Crowdfunding vs. VC: People See the Need, Investors See the Risk
Interestingly, women-led startups are more likely to succeed in crowdfunding efforts than in VC rounds. This fact highlights a critical insight: everyday people are more willing to support women’s missions than institutional investors are. Is this because women founders are more effective at building relational trust and communicating their mission? Perhaps. But it also points to a disconnect in assessing “risk” and “value” in startup investment.
What if we changed that and created a more human, holistic system for evaluating startups? Founders deserve a system that considers lived experience, community need, and market potential through a broader lens. Helping women present their investments in ways that align with traditional risk analysis while pushing VCs to expand their metrics could be one key to closing the funding gap.
The Path Forward: Equal Funding, Better Outcomes
Closing the gender gap in healthcare outcomes starts with closing it in research and funding. Women know women best. That means when a woman leads a health-focused startup, she’s often building for a population she understands on a visceral level. That’s not a risk—that’s an advantage.
To support these innovators, we need more transparency in sex-disaggregated data. We need to know where current medical interventions fail women so that we can create better ones. And we need to fund the exploration of conditions that have long been normalized but are anything but—like migraines, fibroids, PMDD, and infertility.
The Bottom Line
If venture capitalists continue to ignore women-led health startups, they’re not just creating a funding gap; they’re sustaining a healthcare system that fails women over and over again. It’s time for more women and allies to step into the VC space. It’s time for more research, innovation, and trust in the women who are building solutions that millions of women desperately need.
The Women’s Health field is long past due for the funding it deserves. Women are more than half the population. The life sciences industry needs to stop treating women’s health as a niche population. The future depends on it.
Curious to learn more about the future of women’s health? Join WEST on June 24th for a 
highly relevant and fascinating panel discussion on Women's Health. ‘Innovation and Investment--Is the Tide Turning’ explores the latest advancements and investments in women's health.
Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights to close the gap, hear from industry leaders, and explore where the future of women's health is headed.
Resources:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691066.2025.2493049#abstract
https://uofuhealth.utah.edu/notes/2025/01/why-we-know-so-little-about-womens-health?utm
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/20/women-health-research-jill-biden-white-house?utm