What a time to be alive!
From period-tracker apps, to kegel trainer devices, wearables for pelvic floor health, and fashionable wellness jewellery, we are finally giving women (or more specifically, people with vaginas and uteruses) the power to put their physical and mental health back in their own, uh, hands.
According to a new report by Elle, the “femtech” industry has already totalled more than $US1 billion since 2014, with “mostly male VCs, accustomed to complacently ignoring women’s health” now sinking money into everything AI and app based.
This figure is only set to rise in the future, with the industry predicted to make fifty times this amount by 2025.
Who knew people would be interested in taking care of themselves? In spending money on technology that would help them navigate and take control of their reproductive health?
Well… women knew.
For so long we were denied any opportunity to own the space or gain insight into our own bodies because technology hadn’t yet caught up with our needs.
As a young girl growing up in Australia during the nineties, my knowledge of fertility, as well as reproductive and menstrual health was limited.
If I had a question, I would keep it to myself until the time came to flip through the pages of Dolly magazine and pray that someone had sent something similar to Dolly Doctor that month.
The matters of menstrual health were never discussed at my school, and as we were a co-educational organisation, I don’t think I ever heard anyone in authority mention anything about sexual health in regards to the girls or the boys.
My friends and I never had an ongoing dialogue with our parents about our personal health.
It was too embarrassing, and the lines of communication weren’t as open as they appear to be now. We didn’t want to ask, and they didn’t want to be asked.
When the time finally came, many of my friends were handed a book by our parents that aimed to explain it all.
This one (outdated) book was meant to guide us through the highs and lows of menstruation and answer all our questions – almost as if we all had the same bodies that did the exact same things at the exact same times.
Accurate.
These books were often written by some completely unengaging adult that would spend all of two pages talking about periods, and more often than not this information wouldn’t just be limiting, it would be fear inducing.
It provided very broad statistics around the ‘normal’ age for girls to get their period, and spoke of nothing about the pain, the hormonal changes and the emotional ups and downs of a cycle.
How could it? Half of these books were written by people who never had a period.
Like my mother, I was often ignored for my period pain. We were told by a male doctor to take a Naprogesic (or a Valium) and go to bed. I was taught to be fine with losing one or two days a month to crippling pain that was often so bad I would need to be picked up from school with a bucket in the car in case I threw up again.
Pain that was never properly explained to me, even as an adult.
Not frustrating at all.
At some point we grew up – morphing from teenagers to adults, and again, the conversation around menstrual and reproductive health was saved for either the doctor’s office or a quick quip amongst friends who were craving chocolate or feeling bloated.
Beyond the doctor, there was nowhere to go to find a personalised answer to our questions, and many of us didn’t have the time or money to go back every time we had a query.
When you’re 14 and don’t know what’s going on with your uterus, all GPs suddenly seem to look kinda like this.
After all these years of silence – of being scared to talk openly about periods or reproductive health – we’re finally starting to reach out because apps like Clue and Maven have helped to normalise conversations around reproductive and menstrual health.
While it’s über exciting there’s money to be made in developing newer and better apps that will continue to help people gain insight into their own bodies, what is making me truly happy is that we are finally able to take back our own health.
We are not reliant on doctors for every single question. We don’t have to second guess every emotion we’re feeling because we can literally track our cycle in an app down to the minute.
Suddenly on the verge of tears, or so bloated you’re daydreaming about popping yourself like a balloon? The app knows why. The app knows all.
Ah yes, I can see here that it’s time for my monthly Wanting To Murder Everyone.
We are finally being empowered to make decisions and choices about our health by taking technology that we’re using in other areas of our lives to explore all the complex menstrual health queries we’ve held since our time as teenagers.
For so long there’s been a lack of understanding and clarity around menstrual and uterine health for due in large part to a historical lack of interest and research dedicated to women’s health and women’s pain.
That’s coming to an end.
The next step? Helping people detect the early signs of health issues such as endometriosis or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome for themselves and in a timely manner.
Imagine if we could skip past years of pain and confusion with just the tap of a few buttons?
I’m here for it.