Women’s health affects half the population. The companies solving those problems get 2% of venture capital. What that reveals about who holds power, and why Women’s History Month matters.
New York Weekly · March 2026
In 2024, companies with all-female founding teams received a very small fraction of total venture capital funding. For context, companies with both male and female cofounders captured a significantly larger portion. At current rates of improvement, it would take until 2065 to reach gender parity in venture capital allocation. The message is clear: male capital trusts male founders, tolerates mixed teams, and systematically avoids funding women building companies to solve problems that affect half the population.
Women’s health startups raised $2.6 billion in 2024, a 55 percent increase from 2023 and a record high. When including funding for diseases that affect women disproportionately, the total reached $10.7 billion. That sounds promising until you realize femtech is projected to reach $206 billion by 2033 and solves problems that uniquely, disproportionately, or differently affect women. Menopause affects 51 percent of the population at some point in their lives. Erectile dysfunction affects roughly 5 percent. Menopause research receives less funding. When investors were asked why, the answer is consistent: they don’t see women’s health as urgent or commercially viable. The market signal is not ambiguous. It is a reflection of who holds decision making power.
Companies with all female founding teams received 0.6 percent of total VC funding in 2025. Companies with male and female cofounders captured 45 percent. The message is clear.
Who Gets to Be a CEO
The funding gap is compounded by who gets taken seriously as a CEO. As of July 2024, 52 women lead Fortune 500 companies. That is 10.4 percent, exactly the same percentage as in 2023. The number did not grow. Eight women left Fortune 500 CEO positions in 2024. Eight women replaced them. Momentum stalled. Among the Russell 3000, which includes smaller public companies, women represent 6.8 percent of CEOs. Among private companies worth over $1 billion, women represent 7.2 percent of CEOs. Fewer than 5 percent of all venture capital-funded firms have women on their executive teams. Only 2.7 percent have a female CEO.
The data becomes even sharper when you look at who gets funded to scale. Seventy-one percent of femtech startups under six years old have not reached Series A. Femtech startups produce twice as many clinical trials, regulatory filings, and peer-reviewed publications as their digital health peers, yet still struggle to secure early-stage capital. They are held to higher evidentiary standards and receive less capital. And the women leading those companies are overwhelmingly under 40, because the venture capital industry systematically excludes older women from funding consideration.
Data show that women’s participation in entrepreneurship has grown significantly in recent years, and women are launching new businesses at record rates. Younger women and women of color in particular are driving much of this growth, even as women founders continue to face funding disparities compared with their male counterparts.
Femtech startups produce twice as many clinical trials and peer-reviewed publications as their digital health peers. Yet 71 percent cannot reach Series A.
Innovation Is Determined by Who Holds Capital
Only 17 percent of decision makers at large venture capital firms are women. That figure rises slightly to 19 percent at smaller firms, but the structural reality is unchanged: men decide what gets funded, and what gets funded reflects what men understand to be urgent. When venture capitalists were asked why women’s health funding lags, the answers clustered around a single theme: male investors don’t understand the market. They don’t experience menopause, pregnancy complications, endometriosis, or PCOS. When a woman pitches a solution to a problem the investor has never experienced, the pitch reads as niche. When a man pitches a problem the investor has experienced, it reads as universal. California passed a law in 2024 requiring VC firms to annually report the demographics of their portfolio companies starting in March 2025, making the data public in an online database. Transparency is a first step. Accountability requires consequences.
Women‑owned businesses in the U.S. represent a substantial segment of the economy, accounting for roughly 39 percent of all firms, employing over 12 million people, and generating more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue. Despite this impact, startups founded solely by women continue to receive only a very small share of venture capital funding — typically around two percent or less of total investment in major markets — even though female founders often achieve strong performance outcomes. This ongoing gap reflects broader challenges in allocating capital within the startup ecosystem.
Menopause is a $17.66 billion global market expected to reach $27.63 billion by 2030. In the United States, only 1 in 5 obstetricians reports formal training on the topic. A global analysis of medical textbooks found 58 percent contained no mention of menopause. The commercial opportunity is enormous. The public health stakes are urgent. And the companies solving the problem cannot get funded because male venture capitalists do not see it as important.
What Women’s History Month Should Remind Us
Women’s History Month exists to make visible what has been systematically erased. The exclusion of women from medical research until 1993 was deliberate. The exclusion of women from venture capital funding in 2026 is deliberate. Both are justified by efficiency: it costs more to study women, and it costs more to fund companies solving problems male investors don’t understand. The efficiency argument is a smokescreen. The real issue is power. Who holds it? Who decides what counts as innovation? Who determines what problems are worth solving?
Multiple studies indicate that women of color founders receive a disproportionately small share of venture capital compared with their representation as entrepreneurs. For example, research shows Black women founders have received only a tiny fraction of total U.S. venture capital, and women of color overall remain significantly underrepresented among VC recipients. These patterns reflect the compounded effects of both gender and racial inequities in access to funding.
But large philanthropic commitments do not replace the structural change required in venture capital. The industry needs more women making investment decisions. It needs older women to make investment decisions. And it needs accountability for the market distortion that systematically undervalues companies solving problems affecting half the population. Women’s History Month is not a celebration. It is a reminder. The work is not done. The funding gap is a power gap. And power does not redistribute itself.
Innovation is determined by who holds capital. When male investors don’t experience the problem, the pitch reads as niche. When they do, it reads as universal.
Catalyst Brand Strategy works with health and wellness organizations to build equitable frameworks and communications strategies that serve the full demographic spectrum. Women’s History Month exists to remind us that progress requires deliberate action. The women’s health funding gap can be closed or perpetuated. The choice is being made right now, in the boardrooms and pitch meetings, determining whose problems are worth solving.
References
- PitchBook US Female Founders Dashboard (2025)2. Founders Forum Women Funding Statistics Report (2025)3. Silicon Valley Bank Innovation in Women’s Health Report (2025)4. Women Business Collaborative Fortune 500 CEO Report (2024)5. digitalundivided Project Diane Report (2022)6. McKinsey Women’s Health Gap Report (2024)7. Galen Growth Femtech Analysis (2024)8. California SB 54 VC Diversity Reporting Law (2024, effective March 2025)9. Crunchbase Diversity Report (2021)10. J.P. Morgan Black Women Entrepreneurs Analysis
