The vagina business: The rise of femtech • FRANCE 24 English

The vagina business: The rise of femtech • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] Hello, I’m Annette Young and welcome to the 51enter show about women reshaping our world. Coming up, marking the 30th anniversary of a groundbreaking UN conference on women’s rights, China touts its progress on gender equality. But its approach to feminist activism paints a very different picture indeed. And we need to talk about the vagina business. Journalist and author Marina Gerna joins me here in the studio to talk about fee, the rapidly growing industry at the intersection of technology and healthcare that’s revolutionizing women’s health. But first and China this week hosted a women’s summit with the nation’s leader Ci Jinping praising the achievements of Chinese women in the 30 years since that historic 1995 UN conference in Beijing. Yet it comes as feminist groups are being silenced by the Chinese government allegedly for promoting so-called gender antagonism. Charlie James takes a closer look at the limitations being placed on women’s progress in China. Standing before delegates and dignitaries from across the world, Chinese President Xiinping sang the praises of women’s progress in China. Today, women in China truly hold up half of the sky in economic and social development. On the new journey of Chinese modernization, every woman is a star. She was speaking at the Global Leaders meeting on Women, a two-day summit marking the 30th anniversary of the groundbreaking UN conference on women’s rights. That’s where then US first lady Hillary Clinton delivered this famous line in Beijing. Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Xi called this year’s summit a celebration of China delivering on its promises made to women back in 1995. But even as Xi pledged unwavering support for women’s rights, his government has taken aim at those who advocate for it as part of his wider crackdown on civil society. In recent years, Chinese feminists have found it increasingly difficult to even speak about women’s rights, facing arrest and censorship alongside state pressure to fulfill traditional gender roles. There’s been um a real hollowing out of public debate, of civic space, and of um engagement by the state with any kind of civil society group working um actively on the promotion of women’s rights. So what we see is the shuttering of NOS’s those looking at uh employment discrimin discrimination against women those seeking to support survivors of domestic and gender-based violence those working within the LGBT LGBT community um year on year one after another since 1995 women’s issues in China have shown the ability to mobilize major social action online and off and therefore became a target of a state hellbent on control. So while the pageantry of the summit promotes one story, the actions of the government tell another. Just look at the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, which today includes zero women. Now, here’s a powerful image. Just days after being barred from a press conference by the Taliban’s foreign minister visiting India, local women journalists returned with determination, taking their seats to challenge him on the social exclusion faced by Afghan women. Reuters news agency capturing this moment inside the Afghan embassy in Delhi where foreign minister Amir Kataki faced a group of determined women journalists. The UN describing the situation in Afghanistan as gender apartheid with women and girls being denied access to secondary education universities and even barred from public spaces such as parks and gyms. Now, the book title is certainly catchy. I’m talking about the vagina business, but it’s not what you might think. In fact, it’s a highly informative account of the growth in the so-called fee. And here to talk about it with me in the studio today is its author the journalist Marina Gerna. Marina thank you so much for coming in. Let’s start from the very beginning. What exactly is FEM? So the term FEM stands for female technology and it focuses on innovation in the space of women’s health. So it covers topics like fertility, uh periods, pregnancy and menopause. But it also goes beyond the uterus because when we talk about women’s health, it’s important to remember that it’s not limited to reproductive health. In terms of the business side of things, FEM is estimated to be a $1 trillion market opportunity. So it’s a huge opportunity because it addresses the unmet needs of over 50% of the global population. The other thing that’s important to say is that it’s not just a range of devices and apps, but it’s a global movement of innovators, researchers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are challenging the status quo in women’s health. So, what motivated you to write this book? So, people sometimes ask me, why do we need feech if there’s no such thing as men tech? But the reality is that most of our world, including our health care, have been designed by men and for men. So women and people of color, for example, were only included in clinical trials. In 1993, only 4% of the investment that goes into digital health focuses on women’s health. So women’s health has been both underfunded and underresarched for too long. and FEM or you can also just call it women’s health innovation is here to address that issue. I’ve also heard you talk about some of the interesting developments that you’ve come across including the smart bra. What can you tell me about that? That’s right. So the smart bra was one of the first devices that attracted me into this space and it began with a realization I had a few years ago which is if you ask most people to think of a person who’s having a heart attack most of us think of an old white man and the kinds of symptoms that we imagine are pressure on the chest and then pain radiating down the left hand side. So I learned that those symptoms are typical for men but they’re not actually typical for women. As a result, women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed after having a heart attack. Another example I have is from the birth space. So when I started this research, I was in my early 30s and I knew I wanted to have children soon. I also knew that nine in 10 firsttime mothers experience a birth injury, which I think is a really shocking statistic. And I was looking into ways to prevent birth injuries. And I found a company in California called Materna Medical. What they’ve created is a dilator that pre-stretches the muscles of the vaginal canal and it could potentially help us prevent birth injuries. And so once I was looking into the space, I realized the last big innovation in the standard of care of birth was the epidural which was popularized in the 1950s, which is a long time ago. Exactly. And there’s no other area of society or technology where we present people with something that’s many decades old and we say, “Hey, look, this is the most cuttingedge thing we have. Look at this incredible floppy disc. But in birth, that’s exactly what we do. Marina, we’re just going to pause there because there are two engineers at Delph University in the Netherlands who’ve come up with a new design of the vaginal speculum. Uh, long dreaded by many female patients and the aim being to make it less intimidating and certainly less painful. Let’s take a listen to one of the founders. So what makes the lilium very unique is that it actually unfolds like a flower rather than a duck beak and that it has a gentle shape. It’s designed with the patient in mind rather than only the doctor and we’re really trying to improve the experience to be in a comfortable position in a sensitive environment. Marina, the founders there had to resort to crowdfunding in order to pursue their dreams. An indication of just how hard it is for women to attract investment for their inventions or their apps or designs or whatever it is that they wish to pursue. Exactly. Okay. So, one of the main obstacles I have found is that the majority of venture capital investors are male and unfortunately they’re too embarrassed by these subjects. They’re too embarrassed to mention the word vagina in a business setting and as a result they don’t invest in those ventures. I have a quote from an investor in the book who says, “I don’t want to talk about vaginas in my Monday morning partner meeting.” And that pretty much tells you um that there is still this huge stigma in the space and and certainly when it comes to female sexuality, it’s still very much taboo. I mean, there are many men who would be struggling, dare I say, to be able to tell you exactly where the clitoris is and how to locate it. Absolutely. So, female founders overall only get 2% of all the venture capital. And when you’re in the space of women’s health, you’re also facing stigma and taboo and the lack of research. So you have all of these additional hurdles that you have to overcome. But on the flip side, it’s also a huge opportunity for us to create something completely new like the speculum that we’ve just seen. Now, of course, the other danger is is the collection of data and we’ve got a situation now where there’s an massive boost in the number of your apps which monitor your menstrual cycle and given the current climate in the US when it comes to reproductive rights and there are fears legitimate fears by many women’s groups that that data could be collected by government and used against them. Is that a concern as far as you see it too? So, the first thing to know is that there are over 300 period apps on the market and they’re all very different from each other. Some companies have put a lot of thought into how to protect the data of their users and others haven’t put any thought into it at all. So, whenever you’re downloading an app, I would recommend googling the name of the app with another key term like scandal or data leak. Um, and that way you’ll see the most recent news stories about the app. It is a concern in places where abortions are illegal that governments might subpoena tech companies to release that data. But if you have a tech company that’s based in Germany for example like clue the period app they are governed by by GDPR. So that is a very uh strict regulatory framework. Marina thank you so much for coming in. Thank you so much for having me. And that’s it for this edition. So until our next show, bye for now.

It’s an industry tipped to be worth more than a trillion dollars in the coming decade. Femtech refers to technology-driven solutions for women’s health, covering areas such as reproductive health, pregnancy care and menopause management. Marina Gerner, the author of “The Vagina Business”, joins Annette Young to discuss the rapidly growing industry that’s revolutionising women’s health. Also, marking the 30th anniversary of a groundbreaking UN conference on women’s rights, China touts its progress on gender equality. But its approach to feminist activism paints a very different picture.
#women #femtech #womenshealth

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