It is no news that women and women’s health have long been neglected in the innovation sector.

In 2020, only 1% of all venture capital funding in Sweden went to all-female teams, 6% went to mixed teams; and the remaining 93% went to all-male teams, as reported by Dagens Industri. When Astra Zeneca started reporting COVID-19 vaccine-induced blood clots, with a rate of 1 in every 250,000 people, countries all over the world refused to buy. Meanwhile, the largely accepted birth control pills – designed for women – have an estimated rate of causing blood clots in 1 in every 1000 women each year. And while speaking of design; it might be worthwhile to mention that women have been consistently excluded from iterative design research, with seatbelts, voice recognition, and smartphones – just to name a few things – all being designed with mainly men in mind. 

As women take up 50% of the world’s population, it is incredibly discouraging to see this cavernous gap. To know that only 1% of VC funding in Sweden is handed to female founders – and to recognize the neglect of women and women’s health in so many things around us. 

FemTech is here to fill that gap.

With a market potential of 50 billion USD by 2025, FemTech is primarily concerned with addressing the whole lived experience of women, meaning innovations within:

• Menstruation & Period Care
• Fertility & Birth Control
• Menopause
• Chronic Conditions & Hormonal Disorders
• Pelvic Health
• Pregnancy & Post-Pregnancy
• Breast Feeding
• Women’s General Healthcare
• Sexual Wellness

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During our annual event, Crossing Borders: The Future of the Cultural and Creative Industries, we had the pleasure of having Haruna Katayama, FemTech Analyst, as one of our speakers of the evening. Play the video above to hear her full presentation.

Katayama spoke specifically of women’s sexual wellness through the lens of SexTech, technology and technology-driven ventures that are designed to enhance human sexuality. Katayama also spoke of how to de-stigmatize female pleasure to render a new social reality of sex – all through innovation.

Katayama's 80+ page Market Analysis and Branding Guidebook for SexTech start-ups.
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“As everyone knows, sex is a hot topic – and that’s true, financially, as well,” Katayama says in her presentation. But even when pleasure is financially viable, women are excluded. Katayama tells the story of Lora DiCarlo – a female oriented SexTech company, which uses biomimicry and haptic feedback to design pleasurable products for women – who were denied a spot at the CES – the world’s largest consumer electronic trade show because the trade show committee deemed their products “immoral,” and “obscene.” Meanwhile, the inclusion of VR porn, robot strippers, and sex phones had all been approved. Why? Because they weren’t concerned with female pleasure.

And it doesn’t stop there. Lack of women in VC and finding limits investment into FemTech companies, because many male investors simply cannot relate to some female innovations, to which Katayama says:

"We cannot stress enough the importance of having women in tech, creative finance, and especially in managerial positions."

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Curious to hear more about Katayama's work in FemTech? Read our first interview with Haruna Katayama here, and visit her website: harunakatayama.com.‍

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Cover photo via Haruna Katayama.