In December, British Vogue published a deep dive into the femtech movement – some of the products, founders and technologies reshaping women’s health after decades of being overlooked.
The piece explored a simple truth: women’s bodies have been under-researched, under-designed for, and routinely dismissed. Femtech isn’t about novelty gadgets. It’s about correcting a system that never properly accounted for half the population.
From Neglect to Necessity
For decades, female physiology was treated as too complex or inconvenient for serious research. Women were routinely excluded from clinical trials, meaning medicines, diagnostics and devices were built without female bodies in mind.
The result?
Heavy bleeding normalised.
Chronic pain minimised.
Hormonal shifts misunderstood.
What’s changing now isn’t just technology. It’s visibility. As more people speak openly about their experiences with pain, fertility struggles, menopause and pelvic health, demand for better tools has become impossible to ignore.
Where Scarlet Fits Into This Shift
The Vogue feature included Scarlet Period as part of this new wave of femtech innovation, spotlighting rae, our wearable heat pad designed for people who need relief without rearranging their lives.
The idea behind rae was simple. Heat works. But the existing options didn’t. Disposable patches were wasteful and expensive. Hot water bottles and wheat bags weren’t realistic outside the house. rae was created to deliver gentle, targeted warmth in a quiet, discreet, and wearable way. No cords. No pink fluff. Just something that fits under clothes and gets on with the day.
It’s not positioned as a miracle fix. It’s positioned as a better design that responds to a very real gap.
Femtech Is Bigger Than Products
One of the article's strongest points is that femtech isn’t just about devices or apps. It’s about systemic change.
Better data.
Earlier answers.
More agency.
From AI-powered fertility tools to cycle-tracking wearables and pelvic health innovations, the common thread is dignity. Tools that take women’s experiences seriously and turn subjective symptoms into something that can be understood, tracked and acted on.
The industry still has challenges. Accessibility. Cost. Representation. But the momentum is real, driven by people who have lived the problems they’re trying to solve.
Why This Matters Now
Visibility matters. Being seen matters. Not just in media, but in healthcare, funding, research and everyday conversations.
When a publication like British Vogue treats femtech as legitimate, necessary and overdue, it helps move women’s health out of the margins and into the mainstream. That benefits everyone, not just brands.
For us, being included wasn’t about validation. It was about contributing to a broader conversation that says: women deserve better tools, better care, and better design.
The femtech revolution isn’t coming. It’s here. And frankly, it’s about bloody time.
