How the Rise of "Femtech" relates to Women´s Empowerment

That is what the panel discussion ‘Femtech – Empowerment through Innovation?’, organized jointly by DWIH Tokyo (German Centre for Research and Innovation Tokyo) and JDZB Berlin (Japanese-German Center Berlin) on March 24, 2022, set out to examine. The panel brought experts from science and industry together, with distinguished researchers from the field of gendered innovations as well as founders and CEOs of Femtech companies. With over 170 registrations, the event piqued the interest of a wide audience.

Not only did the panelists touch on various topics relevant to Femtech, such as female entrepreneurship, gendered innovation, and women in tech, but the debate went a step further, examining the reasons behind the lack of female representation and role models in tech. The speakers, moreover, discussed female leadership and persisting gender biases, as well as the steps needed to get women into decision-making positions to create more opportunities for future generations of women.

Femtech entrepreneurship in Germany and Japan

Femtech entrepreneurs Peggy Reichelt, CEO and Co-Founder of XbyX Women in Balance, and Dr. Amina Sugimoto, CEO and Co-Founder of fermata inc., kicked off the session by outlining what the founding processes of their companies looked like for them as female entrepreneurs in a mostly male-dominated sector.

The Japanese startup “fermata.inc” features a marketplace for Femtech products Japan and Asia while the German startup XbyX Women supports midlife women with their journey through menopause and aging healthy.

Female underrepresentation and data biases

Looking at gender biases in the medical field, Dr. med. Carina Vorisek, Research Fellow at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, explained that female viewpoints are insufficiently considered due to the low number of women in leadership and decision-making positions. Their underrepresentation extends through many areas, including clinical trials, and perpetuates the lingering data bias as well as the overall lack of diverse data pools.

Asked about gender biases in innovation, Prof. Dr. Nicola Marsden from the Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences, agreed that the default within tech companies was still predominantly male and that their products consequently continued to reinforce pre-existing stereotypes.

Picking up on the topic of data bias, Dr. Miyoko O. Watanabe, Deputy Executive Officer at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), pointed to the low number of female researchers in Japan. With a mere increase of 7% in 20 years, she suggested that more hard scientific data regarding the merit of female participation should be introduced to people in leadership positions.

Challenging the status quo and empowering a new generation

In the discussion chaired by Dr. Laura Blecken, program manager of DWIH Tokyo, the panelists further explored the question of how to nurture a new generation of confident women who own their expertise and can contribute to a more diverse workplace – not only as innovators, but also at legal or governmental levels. Getting women into decision-making positions calls for a more supportive educational environment for young girls to identify their potential and foster their strengths and talents. These structures subsequently need to be expanded into higher-level institutions and, applied successfully, could create a more diverse leadership and cultivate more innovative work environments.

Striving for true inclusivity

The end of the session reiterated that Femtech should aspire to develop products that consider the needs of people from all ages, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds and gender identities. Hopefully, the panelists unanimously agreed, the existence of Femtech products will eventually turn into the norm rather than the exception and there will be no more need for labeling them.

Report: Rachel Martin (Intern at DAAD / DWIH Tokyo)