Femtech, Venture Capital, and the Rise of Investment Feminism: Forthcoming in Signs
In a new article forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, “Investment Feminism and Women’s Health,” GenderSci Lab researchers Jamie Marsella, Marina DiMarco, Abigail Higgins, Sarah Richardson, and Joseph Dov Bruch introduce the term investment feminism to describe a growing social movement in which financial firms present their investments as an opportunity to advance gender equity.
Our work shows that financial firms, startups, and other financial actors are actively shaping social and political conversations related to gender health equity. The concept of investment feminism illuminates an emerging relationship between finance capital, gender relations, and feminist movements.
“Investment feminism articulates a vision of progress powered by finance”
The new article is part of the lab’s ongoing work on the intersection between healthcare finance and women’s health. We elaborate the concept of investment feminism by looking specifically at the women’s health technology market, also known as “femtech.”
The femtech industry markets a wide range of services, tools, and diagnostics including period tracking apps, fertility testing kits, breast cancer diagnostic technologies, pharmaceuticals, and more, with the aim of advancing women’s health while making a profit. Femtech has been a target market for venture capital (VC) funding, which is allocated by firms or funds that invest in promising startups and early-stage companies that they believe will generate large profits in the future. Femtech offers a clear demonstration of how investment feminism operates in the tech and VC space, with implications for the future of women’s health.
As we demonstrate, over the last 10 years, femtech has emerged as a major target for VC investment, leading to a boom in startups developing products targeting women and their healthcare providers. Several VC firms, such as SteelSky Ventures and Portfolia, focus on the femtech industry. They articulate their investments as both a means of achieving gender health equity and delivering a profit.
In the article, we look at two areas targeted by venture capital firms — menstrual product retailers and health testing services. Rael, Cora, and LOLA are women-founded direct-to-consumer period product retailers with VC funding. These companies brand themselves as women-centered alternatives to traditional corporate retailers with a mission to achieve gender health equity – a mission made possible by VC funding.
NextGen Jane and Hormona are femtech health testing services companies with VC funding. NextGen Jane is a diagnostics company that hopes to harness what they call the “menstrualome” — a collection of quantified data extracted from menstrual blood — to develop precise diagnostics for menstrual and gynecological health conditions. To collect these data, the company recruits community members to serve as “beta testers” who donate their menstrual blood and complete detailed surveys. Hormona offers users a menstrual cycle tracking app and is developing a hormonal home testing service. Both companies argue that they are advancing gender health equity by channeling both biodata and financial resources into, for example, improved diagnostics for undertreated diseases such as endometriosis.
“Because of the sheer volume of capital that they manage, these investors are likely to have a significant impact on the future of women’s health technologies”
In the article, we argue that the rise of investment feminism will amplify the power of VC investors and VC-backed femtech companies to shape the landscape of women’s health technologies. The firms we analyze chose to invest in companies that offered products and solutions guided by a vision of feminism grounded in entrepreneurship and/or self-optimization. They positioned this financial investment as a means of driving social change.
The concept of investment feminism is useful for anyone interested in better understanding the relationship between the financial industry, consumerism, and feminisms. By choosing what companies to invest in, the financial industry helps shape what gender equity initiatives seem possible.
Ultimately, we argue that investment feminism contributes to a framing of gender equity in financialized terms. This may deflect or even undermine other feminist political projects. While investment in femtech may yield services, tools, diagnostics, and therapies that offer more targeted, accessible, and comfortable treatment of women’s health conditions, conceiving gender equity through market-driven strategies may limit our ability to envision and advance strategies for social change to improve women’s health that do not rely on the financial industry.
Full Citation of Article and Link to Pre-Print
Marsella, J., DiMarco, M., Higgins, A., Richardson, S.S., and Bruch, J.D. (Forthcoming). “Investment Feminism and Women’s Health.” Signs. https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/ee0314c0-f1c4-415f-870e-4ed158c20f61
Statement of Intellectual Labor
Abigail Higgins drafted and revised the blog post. Jamie Marsella and Sarah Richardson provided several substantive reviews and revisions. Joseph Dov Bruch, Marina DiMarco, and Atlas Sanogo provided additional feedback and edits.
Suggested Citation:
Higgins, A., Marsella, J., and Richardson, S.S, (2025). Femtech, Venture Capital, and the Rise of Investment Feminism: Forthcoming in Signs. GenderSci Lab Blog. https://www.genderscilab.org/blog/investment-feminism