Even Venus Wasn’t Believed: The Hidden Cost of Delayed Diagnosis in Women’s Health
Why fibroids, funding, and disbelief go hand-in-hand and what investors are still missing.
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I was running a multi-million-dollar business at one of the world’s largest financial institutions and I kept spare clothes in my handbag because of the bleeding.
At night, I’d wake with searing pelvic pain. By day, I showed up, with a pack of painkillers in tow, to lead teams, pitch clients, close deals. I was a high performer. A mother. A wife. A woman trained to manage through.
One doctor said it was stress. Another told me to wait and see.
No one seemed alarmed.
By the time I finally received a diagnosis - uterine fibroids, large and numerous, I had endured months of avoidable suffering. But the worst part wasn’t the pain. It was the doubt. The slow erosion of certainty. The feeling that I had to earn the right to be taken seriously.
This week, Venus Williams shared her own version of that story.
She spent years battling unexplained pain, bloating, and fatigue, often feeling misdiagnosed or dismissed1. One doctor reportedly told her “it’s normal”2
She wasn’t believed. Sounds all too familiar.
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This Isn’t Personal. It’s Structural.
Disbelief isn’t new. It’s built into the foundations.
In the 19th century, doctors coined “hysteria” to explain away women’s symptoms, rooted in the Greek word for uterus, hystera. For Black women, the history runs deeper: enslaved women were experimented on without anesthesia under the myth that they didn’t feel pain like white women. That lie evolved and never disappeared.
Even now, Black women’s pain is more likely to be dismissed, misdiagnosed, or minimized3. Fibroids affect up to 70–80% of women by age 50 and often show up earlier and more aggressively in Black women4. Yet research funding remains a fraction of what it should be.
Disbelief doesn’t just live in the clinic. It lives in the capital stack.
The Diagnostic Delay Is a Capital Delay
When you don’t believe a woman’s pain, you don’t study it.
When you don’t study it, you don’t build for it.
When you don’t build for it, you don’t fund it.
And when you finally do? It’s late. It’s expensive. It’s a loss paid in years and lives.
I have watched founders pitch non-invasive diagnostics and hormone-free treatments only to be told “there’s no market.” I have heard the same tired rebuttal: But is it investable?
We ask women to prove the problem, prove the market, and prove their pain on systems never built to collect the data.
This isn’t just a medical failure. It’s a capital one.
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What Venus Did and Why It Matters
Venus Williams is a global icon. Seven-time Grand Slam champion, elite athlete with access, resources, and influence. And even she was told it was all in her head.
Her story cuts through the noise because it exposes a deeper truth:
Power doesn’t protect you from being dismissed. Not even when your name is Venus.
She didn’t just share her diagnosis. She named the delay. The disbelief. The structural rot.
That’s not just awareness. It’s accountability.
The Cost of Late Capital
I’ve seen what belief, backed by capital can do.
Gynesonics was founded to offer an incision-free treatment for fibroids. For years, investors said there was “no market”, despite over 25 million U.S. women affected5. The science and need were clear. But capital was absent.
That delay in belief became a delay in funding.
Eventually, they broke through. Gynesonics raised over $130 million, earned FDA approval, and was acquired by Hologic in a $350 million deal6. An exit. A milestone. A return on belief and capital.
But what if they’d been funded earlier? How many women could have avoided unnecessary surgery? How many markets could have been reached sooner?
Delayed belief is delayed innovation. In women’s health, that delay remains the default.
This Is the Blind Spot
When we say women’s health is underfunded, this is what we mean. When we talk about diagnostic gaps, we talk about human costs hidden in spreadsheets.
Venus reminded us that pain alone doesn’t command urgency. But pain plus story? Pain plus truth? That moves people. That moves markets.
That’s why I’m writing The Billion Dollar Blind Spot.
Because I’ve lived the blind spot. I’ve funded against it. And I’m building a future where women don’t have to perform pain to be heard.
Women’s health isn’t niche. It’s infrastructure. And belief is the first step to building it better.
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I’m writing the book I wish I’d had when I began investing in women’s health—part personal story, part cultural diagnosis, part blueprint for change.
It’s about who gets believed, who gets funded, and why it still matters.
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Coming This Month:
🎧 Blindspot Capital: The Podcast
Formerly FemmeHealth Founders, our podcast relaunches this summer under a sharper lens and a bolder name. Blindspot Capital explores the undercurrents shaping health innovation from the deals that stall to the systems that silence. This season, we speak to the people shifting what gets seen, funded, and scaled. Confirmed guests include:
Ida Tin (Clue, FemTech Assembly) on founding the femtech category
Lisa Suennen (Venture Partner & Healthtech strategist) on how institutional capital moves.
Sabrina Johnson (CEO Daré Biosciences) on what it takes to build a publicly listed women’s health company
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I write weekly at FemmeHealth Ventures Alliance about capital, care, and the future of overlooked markets. If you are building, backing, or allocating in this space, I’d love to connect.
Disclaimer & Disclosure
This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or medical advice, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. Opinions expressed are those of the author and may not reflect the views of affiliated organisations. Readers should seek professional advice tailored to their individual circumstances before making investment decisions. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Venus Williams shared her years-long fibroid struggle and misdiagnoses in interviews with Self and Today (Self, Jul 3, 2025; People/NBC Today, Jul 3, 2025).
Multiple media reports note her statement that she was told “it’s normal” (Self, Jul 3, 2025; Olympics.com, Jul 3, 2025).
Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, M. N. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(16), 4296–4301.
This gold-standard study demonstrates that both laypeople and medical professionals hold false beliefs (e.g., “Black people have thicker skin”) which directly influence lower pain ratings and treatment recommendations for Black patients.
🔗 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1516047113
Fibroid Fighters. (2025, July 2). Uterine fibroid legislation update: Where federal and state efforts stand in 2025. Fibroid Fighters. Retrieved July 5, 2025, from https://www.fibroidfighters.org/blog/uterine-fibroid-legislation-update-where-federal-and-state-efforts-stand-in-2025
MedTech Dive (Taylor, 2024) reports that Gynesonics raised $67 million in 2023 to support commercialization of the Sonata System, adding to prior fundraising to reach over $130 million total.
🔗 https://www.medtechdive.com/news/hologic-gynesonics-for-350-million-fibroid-system/729819/
Taylor, N. P. (2024, October 15). Hologic to buy Gynesonics for $350M to acquire fibroid system. MedTech Dive. Retrieved July 5, 2025, from https://www.medtechdive.com/news/hologic-gynesonics-for-350-million-fibroid-system/729819/
I had to go through years of try this, try that. Following the medical guidelines that were put in place to make us feel like something was being done. In reality, I think it was just to quiet our questioning. Bleeding so heavy tampons plus a pad couldn’t hold it. Clots that were the size of my hand. Finally, the doctor recommended a hysterectomy and when I say I’d like a second opinion, he comes back with “Do you want to end up with cancer like your mother and grandmother?” Like this whole thing was MY fault! After surgery, he tells me my uterus was over ten times bigger than it should have been - full of fibrous tumors. Made it sound like I deserved a trophy😡
Sad, and true wrt so-called women’s pain dismissed as madness or hysterical attention seeking behaviour. What absolute poppycock! What hypocrisy! That a beautiful and talented woman at the top of her game like Venus Williams could be so much as disrespected by “top”
doctors comes as a revelation of horror to me.
However, it’s no surprise, sadly. As an ex-hospital employee, I saw plenty of eating disorder patients: bulimia nervosa, and anorexia nervosa and exercise obsessive compulsive disorder sufferers and so called psychiatric cases who were actually Young beautiful women of all colours and backgrounds and shapes and textures who were crippled by their pain.
Now when I look back I know that my intuition and wisdom weren’t misplaced, these were women in indescribable pain, they were not malingerers or fakes or crazy.
Just sore.
And disrespected.