How Can We Create FemTech That Works for All Women?

Written by Lexi Corner, this blog shares conversations from Mind the Gap: Making FemTech Accessible for Everyone, a workshop run by OHT-ers Aalia Jawad, Rosie Stewart, Bimpe Lawal and Angela Maragna.

The session explored how to put the OHT Women’s Health team’s Making Your FemTech Work for All Women toolkit into practice, asking who gets left out of FemTech design and what we can do about it. Find out more and explore the toolkit here.

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Women’s health is being discussed more than ever, yet much of the conversation still centres on one particular demographic. This is reflected in FemTech design, where there is a tendency to build around white, English-speaking, heterosexual, digitally literate and financially secure women. 

Speaking at HETT 2026, Aalia Jawad, co-lead of the Women’s Health Network at OHT, warned that failing to design beyond this “default” user risks compounding existing health inequalities. Retrofitting accessibility later in product development is not only lengthy and expensive, it often fails to address the barriers incorporated in the first place.

But at what stage should inclusion be looked at, and whose responsibility is it to ensure that happens? How do we build better products that serve all women? These questions were posed to participants at last week’s Mind the Gap: Making FemTech Accessible for Everyone workshop.

Using a fictional FemTech company offering an app to monitor postnatal depression, attendees were asked to consider five phases of a typical user journey and how these might apply to Bridie, a fictional 21-year-old Irish Traveller and mother of two. The goal was not to critique the functionality of the app, but to identify factors that could affect her experience with it.

Where would she hear about the app?

On paper, Company A’s promotion through social media and influencers appears well suited to Bridie: she’s young, owns a smartphone and regularly uses these platforms. But limited internet access complicates that assumption.

Even if Bridie encounters an Instagram ad, that does not mean she will recognise the service as relevant to her, particularly if the influencer promoting it has little connection to her community. Attendees instead pointed to word of mouth as a potentially more meaningful route to engagement.

Could she access it?

Intermittent internet access aside, registration requires a smartphone, email address and photo ID, creating additional points of friction for someone already reluctant to engage with healthcare unless necessary. 

And what happens if her phone breaks? Would she then become reliant on her husband’s device? The discussion highlighted how quickly seemingly straightforward access can become precarious.

Could she use it?

Participants questioned whether the length and language of the questionnaire could prove overwhelming. Completing sensitive questions also assumes she has uninterrupted time and privacy — difficult when living with young children and extended family.

Would she trust it?

One attendee who works closely with Traveller communities described significant distrust of formal healthcare, partly linked to experiences of racism and judgement, and discussed the influence older family members can have over decisions to seek care.

The conversation then turned to whether Bridie would trust a service that nobody else in her community appeared to use. Would she feel comfortable sharing information about her mental health without clear assurances that her privacy would be protected?

Would she continue using it, and would she experience sustained benefits?

Even if Bridie makes it through registration and begins using the free service, what happens when she actually needs help? Therapist support costs £45 a month, raising questions about whether she could afford it or have access to a payment card. And if cost were not a barrier, would a video consultation with a therapist be feasible in her environment? If not, she could disengage at precisely the point she needs further support.

What could Company A do to make its service more accessible?

The group was unanimous in their decision: Company A needed to work with the community from the outset. That means involving people with lived experience and partnering with trusted figures, such as Traveller liaison officers.

But it has to be a two-way street. Asking a community to share sensitive experiences in order to develop a commercial product can feel extractive if those involved never hear what happened afterwards or see any benefit from their contribution. These relationships must be sustained as the service evolves, rather than consulting people once and disappearing.

Participants also made the broader point that designing around the needs of people who face greater barriers can result in a service that works better for everyone. Password-protected access, offline questionnaires and alternatives to video consultations, such as text-based support, could benefit not only Bridie, but those considered the “default” user too.

To end the discussion, one attendee noted that inclusivity requires developers to “fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” Starting with what women actually need could help create an network of digital and non-digital support.

The Making Your FemTech Work for All Women toolkit

Much of the workshop focused on structural access and digital inclusion, one of four themes explored in OHT’s Making Your FemTech Work for All Women toolkit. Developed following eight months of research with founders, innovators and the wider community, the guide brings together practical questions and resources for those creating FemTech products.

Rather than offering an exhaustive, one-size-fits-all framework, the resource is intended to challenge those working in the sector to think differently about who they are designing for, as it did for several attendees at the session.

“There were points I hadn’t even thought of,” said one participant hoping to develop a women’s health app in the future. “This is now something I know that I have to implement in market research and decision-making. I have to think to myself: How do you even reach different groups of people? Do they want to be reached? How do we bridge that gap and ensure that every culture and ethnic group is actually included in what you’re creating?”

Prompting these kinds of ideas and conversations is part of what Aalia hopes the toolkit can achieve. While she said the desire to make products more inclusive is already there, financial constraints can make that difficult. “It’s not just the responsibility of the individual and the founder,” she said. “The ecosystem also needs to change. So this is a call to action for everyone in the ecosystem as well.”