Image courtesy of Pexels.
The vagina, periods, and sex are all normal parts of many women’s lives. However, in everyday conversation, these words are often spoken in whispers, with many simply avoiding these subjects altogether. In her book, The Vagina Business, Marina Gerner discusses these taboo topics in depth and proposes solutions to better women’s health. Gerner is an award-winning journalist, published in the Wall Street Journal, The Times, and the Guardian. She received her PhD from the London School of Economics and currently works as a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Gerner’s latest book combines her interests in finance and innovation with women’s health.
Current knowledge of women’s health is deficient; studies have historically been based primarily on the male experience and fall short when applied to women. Though some recent efforts have been made to include women in studies, women are still poorly represented in research. In her chapter titled “Research,” Gerner speaks on the “gender data gap,” which continues to harm women by not accounting for sex differences in research. Medical incidents, such as birth complications after prescribing pregnant women the drug thalidomide as an aid to morning sickness, have made researchers hesitant to include women in trials. However, Gerner highlights that this decision to protect women from research has sacrificed “protecting women with research.” The idea of “bikini medicine”—the assumption that women are simply smaller versions of men—incorrectly purports that research results apply to all genders equally, though this is rarely the case. This one-size-fits-all mentality fails to consider the importance of sex. This practice, as Gerner puts it, is simply “bad science.” Because of this, issues that are more specific to women, such as menstruation or pregnancy, are not given the attention required for proper treatment.
Actively searching for solutions to women’s health issues in research leads to the creation of more successful products that benefit more people, Gerner argues. In her chapter titled “Unmet Needs,” Gerner argues that finding as many potential problems as possible can decrease a product’s failure rate. Based on the philosophy of the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign, reckoning with a problem forces designers to focus on the unmet need itself rather than creating fancy gimmicks, like aesthetic packaging or the color pink, as products targeted toward women often do. Products that fail to solve the true underlying issues are seen frequently in women’s health; for example, lubricants for vaginal atrophy act only as a band-aid to cover up the real issues that women face, like hormonal imbalances or menopause. The most successful companies with “femtech” products are those that can address unmet needs on a large scale by listening to their target audience. Inventions such as period trackers, sex toys, and contraceptives, which are made with the perspective of the woman’s experience in mind, prove more useful for more women overall. Including women in medical research and designing products with their actual needs in mind will be critical to improving women’s health.