Women represent half the world’s population, yet women’s health remains one of the most overlooked areas of healthcare innovation. While investors continue pouring billions into artificial intelligence, biotechnology and digital health, many startups developing solutions for women’s health still face an unexpected hurdle before they can even pitch their business: they must convince investors the problem exists.
For Annie Munoz, PA-C, founder of My Village Innovations (MVI) Medical, that realization came as a surprise.
After spending 21 years as an OB-GYN physician assistant, Munoz set out to redesign one of the most recognizable, and least evolved, tools in women’s healthcare: the speculum. She expected engineering a better device to be the biggest challenge. Instead, fundraising became the harder problem.
“I have to teach people about women’s health,” she told me. “It’s not just going out there and saying, ‘Here’s this huge market.’ I have to educate everyone on women’s health in general and what a speculum is.”
Her experience illustrates a broader issue. Innovation slows when the people allocating capital don’t fully understand the problems entrepreneurs are trying to solve.
Research from the World Economic Forum found that women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health than men. Closing that health gap could add at least $1 trillion annually to the global economy by 2040, making women’s health not only a healthcare priority but a significant economic opportunity.
When Founders Have to Teach Before They Can Pitch
Every entrepreneur educates investors about their business. Women’s health founders often have to begin much earlier by explaining the healthcare challenge itself.
Munoz recalls meeting investors who didn’t even know a speculum was used during pelvic exams. Even many women understood that the experience was uncomfortable without fully understanding the design limitations that create challenges for both patients and healthcare providers.
As a result, valuable time that should be spent discussing market size, commercialization strategy and financial returns is instead devoted to explaining basic healthcare concepts.
The issue isn’t a lack of intelligence or willingness to invest. It’s familiarity. Investors naturally gravitate toward industries they understand and opportunities that resemble previous successes. When a market falls outside that experience, recognizing its potential becomes more difficult.
Women’s Health Is a Much Larger Market Than Many Investors Realize
Another challenge is how narrowly many people define women’s health. Conversations often focus on fertility, pregnancy or hormone therapy. While those are important areas, they represent only a fraction of the market.
Women’s health also includes gynecology, menopause, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, metabolic health and conditions that affect women differently than men. These represent millions of patients and significant opportunities for innovation.
“We’re half the population,” Munoz said. “It’s a huge underserved, under-recognized market… The amount of innovation that is so necessary in women’s health is just astronomical.”
Yet despite serving half the population, women’s health receives only 6% of private healthcare investment, according to the World Economic Forum’s Women’s Health Investment Outlook 2026. The report also found that funding remains concentrated in reproductive and maternal health, leaving many other areas of women’s health significantly underfunded.
For investors, that’s more than an equity issue; it’s a market inefficiency.
The Cost of Underinvesting
When promising ideas struggle to attract funding, the consequences extend well beyond individual startups.
Patients continue receiving care with outdated technology. Clinicians continue working around tools that haven’t kept pace with advances across the rest of medicine. Preventive care suffers when uncomfortable experiences discourage women from returning for routine examinations.
Munoz points to the fact that clinicians are still using a speculum design that dates back roughly 180 years despite enormous advances throughout nearly every other area of healthcare.
Innovation delayed is healthcare delayed.
Looking Beyond Yesterday’s Investment Playbook
Encouragingly, Munoz believes attitudes are beginning to change. She has male investors who have become strong advocates because they listened, asked questions and recognized both the market opportunity and the potential impact. They may never personally experience the healthcare challenges her company is addressing, but they understand that improving women’s health benefits entire families, workplaces and communities.
Munoz believes investors also need to trust founders with deep domain expertise. “They shouldn’t have to convince you the problem exists,” she said. “They wouldn’t be there if the problem didn’t exist.”
That perspective is worth considering. Entrepreneurs who have spent decades working directly with patients often understand unmet market needs long before investors do. Listening to those experts may reveal opportunities that traditional investment filters overlook.
The Bottom Line
The funding gap holding back women’s health innovation isn’t simply about access to capital. It’s also about understanding.
When investors evaluate opportunities only through the lens of familiar markets, breakthrough innovations can remain hidden in plain sight. Yet the data tells a different story. Closing the women’s health gap could generate more than $1 trillion in annual global economic value, while today’s funding levels suggest the market remains significantly underserved.
For investors willing to ask better questions, listen to experts and challenge outdated assumptions, women’s health may represent one of the most compelling, and overlooked, investment opportunities of the next decade.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
