Healthcare has been approached from a male-centric perspective

Investing in women’s under-served health needs is a no-brainer. It’s an opportunity to make attractive financial returns and to make a difference to the lives of millions of women. I mention the returns before the impact because, as anyone in the investment world will tell you, you’ve got to make returns. With impact investing, you make returns to drive positive change – not the other way around.

Our firm 3SV invests in technology startups that are developing solutions to the critical issues that women face. It’s capitalizing on a seismic shift in economic power, with women seeing their personal wealth growing and spending money on things that make their lives better. There is a huge untapped market opportunity here. Consider menopause, for example, an area of high unmet need. It affects around 450 million women across the globe at any one time, yet around 70 percent of them do not seek medical help to deal with menopause-related symptoms.

Historically, firms have been hesitant to invest in women’s health because it’s been considered niche. It’s very common for people to think that it’s just fertility and pregnancy. But women’s health is a very broad area. It includes female-specific conditions such as contraception, fertility, maternal health and menopause, but also general health conditions that affect women differently, like cardiovascular disease; and health conditions that affect women disproportionately, such as autoimmune diseases.

Part of the problem is that healthcare has been approached from a male-centric perspective. Modern medicine was developed with the male body type as default, so there’s a predisposition to overlook important differences in female physiology. There is also insufficient data around women’s health conditions, and that’s because women have been under-represented in clinical trials. It wasn’t until 1993 that women had to be included in clinical trials in the US, for instance, and there’s still a lack of sex-disaggregated data when it comes to medical research. And the investment industry continues to be male-dominated, particularly in the venture capital space. Women’s concerns are often misunderstood or overlooked by male investors, who aren’t necessarily comfortable talking about subjects like menopause.

But now is the time to invest in this area, because women are more economically powerful than ever. They’re more educated, getting married and having children later or not at all. Women already control up to 80 percent of consumer spending decisions and are projected to control around 70 percent of all discretionary spending.

We’re not the only firm looking to break the mold, but we need more investors to make a real difference. Barriers are gradually breaking down, helped by the global shift towards greater gender equality and changing social attitudes. Digital health companies are starting to collect more data on women’s health, contributing to more informed decisions around investment. In short, catering to the specific needs of half the global population is a massive commercial opportunity. It’s time for investors to realize that.

Find out more about 3SV