Why Women’s Health Gets Overlooked And What Investors Are Missing

For decades, capital has misread the signals in women’s health. Here’s what needs to change and what history can teach us about reframing innovation.

GM beat Ford not by building a better car, but by shifting what progress looked like. What if women’s health is facing the same moment?

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The Lesson from General Motors

In the 1920s, Alfred Sloan stood before the board of General Motors with a simple idea that would change American capitalism: planned obsolescence.

Cars, he argued, should be more than functional. They should be fashionable, updated every year with new trims and styles, not just for utility, but desire. The idea seemed ludicrous to some. Why would customers buy something new when what they had still worked?

But Sloan understood something deeper: people don’t just buy what they need. They buy what they can imagine themselves into.

And with that, GM overtook Ford. Not because they built a better engine. But because they changed the frame of reference. They rewired consumer psychology.

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What Investors Still Don’t See

I've been thinking about that shift a lot lately - not in cars, but in capital.

Because women’s health doesn’t look like progress to many investors. Not in the traditional sense. It doesn’t always arrive with sleek pitches or category-defining IPOs. It doesn’t have the glossy comps or the celebrity founders. It often doesn’t look like a frontier. Which means it gets passed over, again and again, by investors waiting for signals they recognize.

Even when the demand is there. Even when the science is strong.

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The Filters that Fail Us

Last week, I spoke to an institutional investor who said:

“We’d love to invest in women’s health, but we don’t know how to diligence it. There’s no benchmark. No dealflow.”

I’ve heard this before. From family offices lumping femtech into ESG or Impact buckets. From PE funds saying, “Let us know when it’s post-Series C.” From corporate strategics saying, “We’d buy it….if it were bigger.”

Investors say things like

• We dont know how to diligence it

• Let us know when it’s post Series C

• There’s no benchmark

It’s not a lack of innovation. It’s a lack of imagination.

Meanwhile, the companies stall. Not because they aren’t working. But because the capital chain was never designed to move with conviction through unfamiliar terrain. We know how this ends. Devices with breakthrough potential stall out. And another generation of health equity gets deferred, not by lack of innovation, but by lack of imagination.

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What If This Time Is Different?

So maybe the playbook needs to change. Maybe it’s time we stopped waiting for women’s health to look like progress and started recognizing the shape it already takes.

Because women’s health doesn’t need another patch on a broken map. It needs a new compass.

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The Real Signal

The irony, of course, is that investors pride themselves on pattern recognition. But in doing so, they often miss the pattern.

What isn’t recognized rarely gets funded.

But here’s the real signal: demand isn’t the issue.

The market is there. The science is maturing. The public is ready. What’s missing is translation.

And maybe that’s where this starts to shift.

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Signal Not Noise | May 31 Edition

Innovation is outpacing imagination. That’s the disconnect we saw this week. Let’s fix the map, not just the metrics.

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Coming in Q3 2025:

• 🎧 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.

  We are also in conversation with voices from maternal science to global policy stay tuned as the full season drops.

  👉 Subscribe to Blindspot Capital wherever you get your podcasts, or listen directly on Substack.

• Investor Readiness Masterclass
  A live, small-group learning session for women who are beginning to explore early-stage investing in health and wellness sectors. We will cover frameworks, red flags, and how to approach due diligence not through a financial advice lens, but from a readiness and ecosystem-awareness perspective. Join the waitlist here.

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.

👉 ICYMI - Our Latest Publications

• How to Start Angel Investing in Women’s Health with Just $1K

• Why Women’s Health Is Still Underfunded and What Smart Investors Are Doing About it

• Our Latest Edition of Signal Not Noise

• The 1,000-Day Fix: Nina Kumari’s Case Against “Good Enough” Formula

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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.