Femtech is technology designed to address health needs specific to women, spanning everything from period-tracking apps to wearable devices that monitor menopause symptoms. The term was coined in 2016 by Ida Tin, founder of the cycle-tracking app Clue, to describe a then-unnamed wave of innovation in women’s health. The global femtech market was valued at roughly $39 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $97 billion by 2030.
What Femtech Actually Covers
The word sounds like it might refer to one type of product, but femtech is an umbrella term covering a wide range of health sectors. The current landscape breaks into several broad categories: fertility automation, period pain management, gynecological health, menopause management, precision oncology, and advanced maternal care. In practice, this means products as different as at-home hormone testing kits, smart breast pumps, pelvic floor training devices, AI-powered symptom trackers, and telehealth platforms connecting women with specialists.
What ties these products together is their focus on conditions and life stages that have historically been underfunded and under-researched in mainstream medicine. Many address gaps where women have traditionally been told to just manage on their own, whether that’s tracking ovulation with a calendar or enduring hot flashes without much guidance.
Where the Money Is Going
Global femtech investment hit $2.2 billion in 2024. That sounds substantial, but it represents only 8.5% of total digital health funding. Fertility and pregnancy have attracted the lion’s share of attention, while other categories remain strikingly underfunded. Only about 7% of femtech startups focus on menopause, for example, even though menopause affects an estimated 1.2 billion women worldwide and the menopause market alone could reach $600 billion by 2030.
There’s also a notable gap in who benefits from the investment wave. In 2024, companies founded solely by women received just 1% of total U.S. venture capital, down from 2% the year before. Mixed-gender founding teams captured about 20% of funding. For an industry built around women’s health, the disconnect between who the products serve and who controls the companies making them remains a persistent tension.
Fertility and Reproductive Health Tools
Fertility is the most visible corner of femtech. Apps that predict ovulation windows based on basal body temperature, cervical mucus changes, or hormone levels have become mainstream. Some pair with Bluetooth-connected thermometers or wearable sensors that take readings while you sleep, removing the need to manually check your temperature every morning.
At-home diagnostic testing has also expanded. The SpermCheck Fertility Test, the first FDA-approved home screening test for sperm count, reports 98% accuracy with results in about 10 minutes. The SwimCount Sperm Quality test, which measures motile sperm concentration, has an accuracy of 95% compared to lab microscopy. These kits don’t replace a full fertility workup, but they give couples an accessible starting point before committing to clinic visits. On the women’s side, at-home hormone panels can now measure key fertility markers from a finger-prick blood sample, though accuracy and clinical utility vary by brand.
Menopause and Midlife Health
Menopause is widely considered the most underserved segment of femtech. The category is growing quickly but from a very small base, with products spanning several approaches. Wearable devices track temperature fluctuations, sleep disruption, and other patterns that help women and their doctors identify symptom trends over time. Temperature-regulating clothing uses specialized fabrics to help manage hot flashes. AI-powered apps offer personalized insights based on individual symptom patterns and can connect users with telehealth consultations.
Nutritional products formulated for menopause, including supplements and functional foods targeting bone density, mood, and sleep, represent another growing niche. Skincare brands have also entered the space with products designed for the specific skin changes that occur as estrogen declines, focusing on hydration and collagen support. The breadth of these products reflects something important: menopause affects nearly every system in the body, and women going through it have been offered remarkably little beyond basic hormone therapy for decades.
Data Privacy Concerns
Femtech apps collect some of the most sensitive health data imaginable: menstrual cycle details, sexual activity, pregnancy status, fertility treatments, and miscarriage history. This raises serious privacy questions that the regulatory landscape hasn’t fully answered.
The U.S. currently has no comprehensive federal privacy law governing femtech data. Many health apps fall outside the scope of existing medical privacy protections because they aren’t classified as medical devices or covered healthcare entities. That means your period tracker may not be held to the same data standards as your doctor’s office. Where your data is stored matters too. Many apps process information on servers in different countries, potentially subjecting it to weaker data protection laws than those in your home jurisdiction.
The stakes became more concrete after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling on abortion access. Because femtech apps store detailed reproductive data, that information could theoretically be used in legal proceedings against women seeking certain types of reproductive care. Some apps responded by adding anonymous modes or local-only data storage, but protections remain inconsistent across the industry. Before using any reproductive health app, it’s worth checking whether the company encrypts your data, whether they share it with third parties, and whether you can delete your information permanently.
How Femtech Differs From General Health Tech
You might wonder why women’s health technology needs its own category at all. The answer is largely about correcting a historical imbalance. Clinical research has disproportionately studied male bodies for most of modern medicine’s history. Conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and postpartum depression have been chronically underfunded relative to how many people they affect. Femtech exists as a distinct category because these needs weren’t being met by general health tech.
The label also serves a practical market function. Before Tin coined the term, founders building women’s health products struggled to explain their companies to investors in a concise way. “Femtech” gave the sector a name, which made it easier to track funding, measure growth, and build investor interest. Whether the term will remain useful as women’s health becomes better integrated into mainstream medicine is an open question, but for now it describes a real and rapidly expanding market filling gaps that traditional healthcare left open for a very long time.