Women’s health is vastly underfunded. Here’s a plan to change that

Women’s health remains significantly underfunded relative to its importance for global wellbeing and economic growth. Despite representing nearly half the world’s population, many of the conditions that affect women uniquely or require women-specific approaches continue to receive limited attention from research, innovation and private investment.

The underinvestment and resulting health impacts reduce workforce participation, slow scientific progress and undermine long-term economic resilience. For decades, fragmented data, historical bias, the lack of women in relevant leadership roles and misaligned incentives have obscured the true burden and potential of women’s health. The result is a system where need is high, but visibility, and therefore capital, remains low.

To help address this gap, the World Economic Forum, with support from Boston Consulting Group, has developed the Women’s Health Investment Outlook — the first comprehensive mapping of private capital flows in women’s health spanning conditions that affect women uniquely (e.g. menopause), differently (e.g. cardiovascular disease), and disproportionately (e.g., autoimmune disorders). By illuminating where capital is concentrated, where whitespace persists, and where scalable growth is emerging, the Outlook reframes women’s health as a critical and investable domain — one where improved capital alignment can deliver sustained returns in health outcomes, innovation and macroeconomic performance.

The Women’s Health Investment Outlook analyzes thousands of private sector transactions from 2020 to 2025, revealing how limited visibility and fragmented funding have held the market back from reaching its full potential.

The asymmetry is clear. Women’s health captures only 6% of private healthcare investment, and companies focused exclusively on women’s health attract less than 1%. Capital remains concentrated in three areas — reproductive health, maternal care and women’s cancers — which together account for nearly 90% of investment.

Meanwhile, conditions such as endometriosis, menopause and polycystic ovary syndrome — each affecting hundreds of millions globally — receive under 2% of private healthcare funding. Even in major disease areas like cardiovascular, metabolic and mental health, women-specific approaches represent only around 1% of private healthcare capital.

Half of private investments in women’s-health specific companies are at pre-seed or seed stage, significantly higher than the 32% share across healthcare overall. This reflects a nascent sector gaining momentum. Multi-billion-dollar acquisitions in pelvic health and diagnostics, competitive exits in biopharma, and rising institutional interest in scalable platforms suggest that the market may be nearing an inflection point.

The Outlook spotlights six high-potential areas that serve as exemplars of where current activity and forward signals point to investment opportunity:

Together, these segments represent a continuum of opportunity — from emerging high-growth platforms to scalable models with strong demand and growing investment momentum.

Stakeholder consultations reveal both optimism and impatience. Momentum is unmistakable: venture capital, institutional investors and philanthropy are beginning to mobilize capital at scale. Funding rounds for women’s-health ventures have accelerated, and multi-billion-dollar commitments promise to address long-standing gaps in foundational research. Yet structural frictions continue to inhibit sustained capital formation and market maturity.

The Outlook identifies six systemic constraints that limit growth and scale:

Together, these frictions perpetuate a self-reinforcing cycle: limited data constrains investor confidence, and low investment limits new evidence. Breaking this feedback loop is critical to enabling women’s health to mature into a fully investable segment of the global health economy — one positioned to attract sustained engagement from investors and industry leaders alike.

The women’s health investment gap cannot be closed by any single actor. It demands targeted action across investors, industry leaders, philanthropy and public institutions — each addressing the challenges where they can drive the greatest impact.

The Outlook identifies six imperatives to accelerate momentum:

With these enablers in place, women’s health can evolve from a fragmented niche into a coherent growth ecosystem — capable of delivering measurable returns, scalable business models and sustained economic value.

The time to act is now. In response to the Outlook’s findings, the World Economic Forum, with the support of Boston Consulting Group, is working on next steps to bring investors, companies, philanthropies and other stakeholders together around shared priorities that can drive real change in women’s health investment through the Women’s Health Investment Consortium.

The foundations for progress are in place. What happens next will determine whether women’s health remains undercapitalized — or becomes a fully realized sector delivering durable returns for investors and industry leaders, better health outcomes for women, and long-term value creation for the global economy.

The following people also contributed to this work: Melissa Patel, World Economic Forum; Sarah Chamberlain, Boston Consulting Group; Julie Dethier, Boston Consulting Group; Alexandra Friedman, Boston Consulting Group; Amira Ghouaibi, World Economic Forum; Supriya Jain, Boston Consulting Group; Krista King, World Economic Forum.