Why Longevity Tech Is Failing Women Over 40

We are coding the future of health around male defaults. Women over 40 are being left behind.

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In 2014, Apple launched its long-awaited Health app. It tracked everything; steps, sodium, blood alcohol. But not periods. Half the population. Gone from the dashboard.

It wasn’t a technical oversight. It was cultural. No one in the room thought menstruation was essential health data. It took a public outcry and a full year to fix. And even then, they tucked it under the wellness tab. Not vitals. Not system-critical. Optional.

Now, a decade later, we are doing it again.

We are building longevity dashboards. AI health coaches. Wearables that promise to optimize your aging process. But the defaults are still male. The baselines are still male. And menopause? Still missing.

No red flag when your sleep fractures, your joints ache, your heart risk triples. No dashboard that says: “Your biology is shifting. Here’s what to do about it.”

This is not a side case.

If we don’t design for the realities of women’s midlife, we’ll keep building tools that track decline without ever understanding its cause.

The question isn’t whether women will age. It’s whether we’ll notice.

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New Here?

This is Part 2 of my five-part series on why longevity tech needs a gender lens. If you are an investor, operator, or future builder, start here.

→ Preorder the book: The Billion Dollar Blind Spot

→ Subscribe to the podcast: Blindspot Capital is launching this week!

→ Get the Brief: The Menopause Edition drops on August 10th (tools, science, capital stack)

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The New Frontier in Aging Tech

In venture circles, they call it the silver tsunami; a wave of aging populations, and a trillion-dollar opportunity to build for older adults. The pitch decks are everywhere:

• Apps for medication tracking

• Robots for elder care

• Platforms for end-of-life planning

But look closely and a pattern emerges: Most AgeTech is built for one end user: an aging man. It’s subtle. You see it in the data sets, diagnostic assumptions, UX defaults.

And it’s a problem.

Because women live longer. Age differently. And hit midlife with a physiological reset that rewires everything from bone density to brain clarity.

If your AgeTech doesn’t account for that, you are not solving aging. You are optimizing decline, just not the one women experience.

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The Missing Dashboard

I wear a smartwatch that tracks my REM cycles. But when I started waking up drenched in sweat, mind foggy, heart racing, there was no alert. No pattern detected. No prompt to investigate estrogen or neuroinflammation.

Just silence. As if nothing important was happening. But something was. My biology was recalibrating itself and no one had built a dashboard for that. We are designing tech that notices every step, every heartbeat, but not the pivotal shift that reorients half the population’s health trajectory.

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The Historical Lens: Male Biology as Default

This isn’t new. From seatbelts to statins, most health systems were built around male norms even when the female response diverged completely.

Now, longevity tech is repeating the same bias. But with a twist: it doesn’t just ignore women’s symptoms. It misses the market.

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A Market Hidden in Plain Sight

Most investors picture aging as a gradual slope, an inevitable slow decline. But that’s not how it shows up for women. Between 40 and 55, something sharper happens. Hormones shift abruptly. And with that shift comes a cascade of health consequences:

• Sleep disturbances

• Cardiovascular changes

• Rising inflammation

• A spike in health-seeking behavior

This stretch of midlife isn’t a niche corner of aging. It’s where the curve bends. Where risk rises. And where attention is urgently needed. Yet capital continues to overlook it.

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From Assistive Tech to Adaptive Systems

What if the next wave of AgeTech wasn’t about helping people die with dignity, but about helping women live with vitality? What if we stopped managing decline to designing for resilience?

We’d see:

• Smart diagnostics for hormonal shifts

• Sleep tech calibrated for midlife disruption

• Cognitive tools for brain fog and memory gaps

• Financial tools that factor in caregiving, divorce, and invisible labor

• Musculoskeletal support for osteoporosis and strength loss

• Nutrition and mental health platforms tuned to midlife biology

This isn’t science fiction. The science exists. The need is urgent. What’s missing is capital that knows what to look for.

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Aging Needs a Gender Lens

If you are building in AgeTech and not talking to women over 40, you are not early. You are early to the wrong thing.

The female longevity curve is real.
It’s under-researched.
It’s underfunded.
And it’s wide open for those who know how to listen.

This isn’t about pinkifying health tech. It’s about building for biological reality and seizing the opportunity to reshape aging, not just extend it.

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Preorder the upcoming book The Billion Dollar Blind Spot to learn why women’s health is the future of healthcare investing.

And if this post sparked something in you?
Share it. Quote it. Send it to the person who still thinks midlife health is a niche.

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Join Our Network

Are you building or backing credible, under-the-radar solutions in women’s health?

We want to hear from you. Reach out privately or reply to this post. FHV curates brands and breakthroughs that deserve broader attention in the women’s health ecosystem.

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.

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References

Apple Inc. (2014, September 17). Health (Apple) [Mobile app]. Wikipedia. Retrieved July 2025, from Wikipedia

Carpenter, J. (2014, September 25). Apple promised an expansive Health app so why can’t I track my period? The Verge. Retrieved July 2025, from The Verge

Kho, M. (2015, September 2). Finally, you’ll be able to track your period in iOS. Wired. Retrieved from Wired

Perez, C. C. (2019). Invisible women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men. Chatto & Windus.

Pharma’s Almanac. (2025, May). Closing the gender gap in digital health and wearable technologies. Pharma’s Almanac.

Chandrasekaran, R., et al. (2025). Usage trends and data sharing practices of healthcare wearables. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27, e63879.

Gerdeman, D. (2019, November 27). Fitness trackers and wearables are ignoring a $50bn market: women. Wired.

Yfantidou, S., Sermpezis, P., Vakali, A., & Baeza-Yates, R. (2023). Uncovering bias in personal informatics. arXiv.

Albert, K., & Delano, M. (2021). “This whole thing smacks of gender”: Algorithmic exclusion in bioimpedance-based body composition analysis. arXiv.