The Field

What we're
thinking about

Honest writing on women's health, technology, bodies, and the systems that shape them.


The Science

Sex bias in pain management decisions

An analysis of 21,000+ emergency department records found female patients are consistently prescribed less pain medication than males with identical pain scores — and the disparity holds regardless of clinician gender. Moves the conversation from anecdote to large-scale evidence.

Women were undertreated for their pain regardless of the gender of the doctor or nurse attending to them.
PNASMika Guzikevits, Tom Gordon-Hecker, Shoham Choshen-Hillel, Alex Gileles-Hillel et al.August 2024
Technology

Flowing data: women's views on privacy and data security when using menstrual cycle tracking apps

The first peer-reviewed qualitative study of what women actually understand about the data their period apps collect — conducted in the post-Dobbs landscape where this data can be subpoenaed. The gap between user assumption and app reality is the story.

Only one app reviewed explicitly addressed the sensitivity of menstrual data with regard to law enforcement in their privacy policies.
Oxford Open Digital HealthSarika Mohan and Judy Jenkins, Swansea University Medical SchoolJanuary 2025
Body & Culture

How sexism in medicine continues to endanger women's health

A Radcliffe symposium maps how sexism in curriculum, clinical pattern recognition, and trial design creates cascading harm. The structural argument made by credentialed voices at an elite institution.

From marginalizing heart disease symptoms to over-diagnosing anxiety, the medical system was not designed with women in mind.
Harvard GazetteHarvard Gazette staffOctober 2025
Founders

Meet Ida Tin, the entrepreneur who coined the term 'femtech'

Ida Tin, co-founder of Clue and the person who coined 'femtech', argues the sector's core problem is a data infrastructure gap — decades of missing female health data that cannot be fixed by apps alone, only by building the science from scratch.

There has been an extraordinary blind spot around female healthcare.
EuronewsEuronews staffMay 2024