Geri Stengel

Source: PwC, "From Margin To Mainstream: The Future Of Women's Health," March 2026. Adapted.PwC Deals Strategy practice that advises companies on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and private equity transactions."

Luba Patlakh, a speech therapist, guides a young patient through a fine motor and communication exercise.

Luba Patlakh built Kidology to get kids into pediatric therapy fast. Now she wants to franchise it, and is turning down private equity to do it.

Mahzi Therapeutics is pioneering a new biotech model by letting patients and families invest in the company developing gene therapies for rare neurodevelopmental disorders. Led by Yael Weiss and now in a trial for Pitt Hopkins syndrome, Mahzi uses Regulation Crowdfunding to turn affected families into shareholders, with half of early reservations from parents. The model makes patients financial stakeholders and active participants in drug design, shaping trial endpoints. Despite significant venture capital, Mahzi leans on community funding to reach diseases big pharma overlooks because of smaller patient populations. The strategy aims to treat many rare neurogenetic disorders, making patients partners in both scientific and financial success and challenging traditional biotech structures.

Tubulis, a German oncology company developing antibody-drug conjugates for ovarian and lung cancer, raised the largest women's health round of 2025 at €308 million (~$340 million).getty

Women's health investment reached $1.55 billion in 2025, and a new report calls it "the Era of Scale." The investors writing the checks see something more complicated.

A new "National Strategy to Close the Women's Health Gap" has been endorsed by 37 diverse organizations, including cardiology and neurology groups, highlighting that women's health extends far beyond reproductive care. The framework, seeking $20 billion over a decade, argues that misclassifying women's health as a niche specialty has led to severe underfunding, with only 8.8% of NIH research spending allocated to it. Proponents emphasize "sex as a biological variable" impacts all medicine, leading to a significant research and data shortfall. This gap fosters misinformation and represents a massive economic loss. The strategy aims to reclassify and properly fund research, ensuring future medical advancements, especially in AI, accurately account for biological sex differences. This systemic change is crucial to avoid repeating past mistakes and truly personalize medicine for everyone.

In 1981, Connie Rishworth needed a man's signature to borrow money for her business. That was the law. Today her daughter Candice Shum is CEO of Culligan Water of Greater Kansas City, which grew 144%—from $8 million to $22 million—in six years since she's been CEO. The company is among just 6,000 women-owned businesses in America reaching the middle market, a threshold only 2.4% of women-owned firms ever cross.

Summary Ida Tin coined "femtech" and built Clue. Now she's directing a €40 million German government challenge to fund what femtech skipped: biosensors that read hormones continuously in real time. Eight teams are racing to build them. The goal isn't a single winning product—it's the shared scientific infrastructure, including the first standardized hormone dataset, that no startup could build alone.

Ida Tin is the founder of Clue and the Femtech Assembly, and directs the SPRIND Continuous Hormone Monitoring Challenge.