Women’s Health Innovation
Opportunity Map
For too long, women’s health R&D has been pushed to the margins—rarely receiving the attention, funding, or urgency it deserves.
Despite making up half the world’s population, women remain underrepresented in biomedical research and clinical trials, even for conditions such as cardiovascular disease that disproportionately affect women.
Women’s health is not only a moral imperative—it’s also one of the smartest investments we can make.
Equitable investment in women’s health leads to not just financial returns, but also expansive health and social benefits. Women who lead longer, healthier lives improve the health of their families and contribute to the workforce, leading to more resilient communities and thriving economies. Innovations tailored to women’s unique health needs have the power to save millions of lives and generate billions in economic returns.
The Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map
The Opportunity Map identifies 50 high-potential opportunities across 10 priority innovation areas—offering a strategic roadmap for researchers, investors, policymakers, and other stakeholders committed to advancing women’s health. It highlights the most promising opportunities based on their potential for impact, scalability, and contribution to health equity, and presents clear, actionable strategies to drive progress over the next 15 years.
Cross-Cutting Topics
Issue-Specific Topics
Partnerships
All Opportunities
Explore all 50 opportunities to build the foundations for equitable innovation globally.
Data and Modeling
Data on women's health is underfunded, incomplete, and unrepresentative—lacking sex/gender distinctions, diverse populations, lifespan coverage, and accurate morbidity measures. This critical gap skews research, funding, and care. Innovating data types, collection methods, metrics, and analysis methods will improve understanding, decisions, investment, and outcomes for women globally.
Research Design and Methodologies
Research often ignores sex and gender, underrepresenting women in preclinical and clinical studies, and rarely analyzing outcomes by their sex or gendered dimensions. Integrating intentional design and novel, ethical methodologies can close knowledge gaps, personalize care, and reduce disparities in women’s health.
Regulatory and Science Policy
Regulatory and science policies steer research, evidence, and product pipelines. Yet sex and gender considerations are fragmented, underenforced, and uneven globally, hindering innovation. Strengthened, aligned policies can prioritize women’s health across the lifespan and embed sex and gender insights throughout R&D, improving access and outcomes.
Innovation Introduction
Successful women’s health innovation requires user- and system-centered design but faces funding gaps, limited support, and awareness. Women founders receive minimal capital (2% US; 0.9% Europe), creating a valley of death. Targeted support and cross-sector financing can unlock a market projected over $1T by 2027, advancing equity and scalable impact.
Social and Structural Determinants
Women’s health depends on social and structural determinants. Research and innovation should address root causes, intersectional impacts, and context; use frameworks like syndemic care; measure determinants; and show societal benefits. Funders must back equitable, culturally relevant, actionable solutions for SGM, women of color, and LMIC populations.
Training and Careers
Improving women’s health requires integrating sex and gender into R&D education and engaging stakeholders. Supporting women’s participation and leadership boosts inclusive research and innovations. Addressing structural inequities in STEMM through harmonized education, training, and policy interventions can strengthen the workforce and advance women’s health outcomes.
Communicable Diseases
Communicable diseases disproportionately affect women, especially in LMICs, due to biological, gender, and pregnancy-related factors. R&D lags: despite high DALYs, only 13% of products target communicable diseases. Urgent, gender-responsive R&D and maternal immunization efforts are needed, particularly as risks continue to rise due to social and environmental factors worldwide.
Non-Communicable and Chronic Conditions
Non-communicable and chronic diseases are rising rapidly and pose trillions of dollars in economic burden, especially in LMICs. Women are disproportionately affected, yet underrepresented and underfunded. Prioritizing sex- and gender-specific R&D, redefining women’s health beyond reproduction, and building evidence on differential risks, symptoms, and treatment responses will impact millions of women globally.
Female-Specific Conditions
Women’s health faces vast unmet need and an enormous, untapped market, yet chronic underfunding leaves few innovations and sparse pipelines. Economic costs are high, and maternal deaths are rising, with stark disparities between LMICs and HICs. More research, funding, coverage, and engagement are essential.
Cross-Sector Partnership
Cross-sector partnerships are vital to women’s health R&D. Current efforts are fragmented and under-resourced due to awareness, bias, and data gaps. A unifying partnership would convene stakeholders, elevate women’s health within broader R&D landscapes, and develop, implement, and share equitable models, incentives, and accountability to build a robust, well-funded ecosystem.
About the Innovation Equity Forum
The Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map was commissioned by the Innovation Equity Forum, a cross-sector initiative of nearly 250 experts and stakeholders from over 50 countries.
This diverse group brings together perspectives from multiple regions and sectors dedicated to advancing women’s health. Established through a collaboration between the Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the Forum was originally convened in 2023 to develop the Opportunity Map. Today, with the support of the Gates Foundation, the Forum continues to meet monthly to translate identified opportunities into action and drive accountability across the women’s health R&D field.
Our Work
The IEF is committed to advancing progress against the Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map – to move agenda into action. Our initiatives and workstreams focus on leveraging the collective knowledge of our global community to drive impact in women’s health.Resources
Explore our growing body of resources and research from across the women’s health innovation ecosystem. Visit our full Resource Library for even more tools and insights.
2025
BMJ Collection on Women’s Health Innovation
BMJ
Open source collection summarizing research, analysis, and opinion on advancing women’s health innovation, focusing on ethical, data-driven approaches, leadership, and healthcare solutions.
2024
Closing the women’s health gap: A $1 trillion opportunity to improve lives and economies
McKinsey Health Institute
Summarizes data on the global women’s health gap, its economic impact, root causes, and strategies to improve health equity and drive economic growth.
2024
G-FINDER
Impact Global Health
Provides data visualizations and downloadable datasets on global funding flows for sexual and reproductive health R&D, supporting analysis and decision-making in health research investments.
2024
Global Women’s Health Index
Hologic
Provides data and annual reports on global women’s health, surveying 78,000+ women in 142 countries to inform health policy and track well-being trends.
Whether you’re interested in becoming an Innovation Equity Forum member or simply staying informed, we welcome your ideas, expertise, and energy. Let us know how you’d like to engage.
