The outdated health idea that's holding women back in life and careers

CNBC

29-04-2025

Twenty-five years ago, Joanna Strober invested in a company called BabyCenter. Twenty-five years later, the company is still serving women, "a lot of women," Strober says. She was a pregnant venture investor at the time she made the BabyCenter investment, and it helped to spark a bigger idea: for too long, she says, the storyline for women facing challenges has been "just deal with it."
"It's a weird thing ... and that's just really unhealthy, and we have to change that," Strober said at the recent CNBC Changemakers Summit in Los Angeles.
For Chelsea Hirschhorn, having her first child led her to become "totally disillusioned" with the chasm between the image of new parenthood that was marketed and the reality she experienced. "The picture-perfect image of parenting was overwhelming for a new parent," she said. "There was a big dichotomy between the content I was consuming and the front-line experience at 3 a.m."
Hirschhorn says there was no data available at the time to substantiate what she felt because the topic was understudied and underfunded, so she "took on" the category of infant health and wellness. "For whatever reason," Hirschhorn says, she had "the conviction to think I could fix this."
While there is a distinction between the health markets the two female CEO and founders focus on — not every woman will become pregnant but all will go through menopause — one big idea binds the two women leaders together: for far too long, they say, women have been expected to suffer.
"We have this idea that perimenopause is at a certain time and people think they have to suffer for a really long time before they get the right care, but what we say is you don't have to suffer at all," Strober shared at the Changemakers Summit. "As soon as you're in your 30s and anything starts feeling wrong, you should get help. The idea of suffering is really outdated," she said. "Women have been trained to suffer for far too long."
Strober and Hirschhorn were both named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list. (Actress and entrepreneur Naomi Watts, who has become a leading advocate for menopause health after struggling with early menopause at the height of her Hollywood fame, was also among the 2025 Changemakers.)
At the Changemakers Summit on April 8, the two women CEOs shared advice and lessons from their successes bringing new business ideas to health care. Here are a few of the key themes they touched on in a discussion with CNBC's Kate Rooney.
In addition to "the dearth of information" that exists to prepare women for the reality of parenthood, educational content for women has been censored when on the topics of reproductive health. That was something that Hirschhorn learned once she started Frida, a time when it was "almost impossible," she says, to find authentic storytelling on the subject matter.
"Sixty percent of women's health ads content, or content in general, has been in some way, shape or form, rejected or filtered," she said. That's not just online but on linear television, part of what Hirschhorn calls a "very gendered dichotomy," citing the fact that male health and sexual wellness content is approved at a significantly higher rate. That leaves her "incredulous," she said, and she added it is a call to action to shift from women's health being a topic of provocation to a topic of public health.
"Women have to advocate for themselves," she said. "Women can't be complacent and this goes beyond health care. This can drive real change, in retail ... in every facet of life," she added.
Strober noted that when she was building Midi Health it became clear that a major challenge would be working with special codes created by the insurance industry for menopause, in effect, another form of institutional censorship. Midi Health decided to position itself as an in-network primary care provider that had a specialty in menopause and that turned out to be a "really effective" way to gain traction, and it now has nationwide insurance coverage with all the large insurance companies in the U.S.
"They are not necessarily going to cover sexual health issues but they will cover primary care, so you just subsume it," she explained. "By viewing menopause as just part of women's health, we were able to create a reimbursement mechanism for standard insurance regulation."
That insurance coverage is a very big deal, because research is showing that lack of menopause treatment can have a high cost when it comes to women's careers. A study Strober pointed to during the Changemakers discussion found that at the mid-career moment when women should be gaining their greatest successes, the shift into menopause can hold them back.
Strober said the growing body of research details how menopause can result in discrimination at work, with women quitting jobs, or not going for raises or promotions because of symptoms, and also because they don't believe they can get the treatment that they need.
"If you believe that you have something that can't be fixed, it's very embarrassing, and that means people step back from what they are doing," Strober said. "They are scared," she added.
That can be the experience what is called brain fog and hot flashes.
"You lose power during hot flashes," Strober said. "People are not as confident. But if you are getting treated for it, 'it's just a hot flash' and you can regain power," she added.
Hirschhorn says that by the numbers, there is still "so much untapped potential in the women's health market."
It is estimated to grow to $60 billion by 2027, she said, and that is despite the fact that less than 4% of health-care R&D spending and investment goes to the category — a "seismic gap," she said.
It is a well-known fact in consumer research that women dominate household spending, but Hirschhorn said in Frida's market there is a "viral" opportunity that is underappreciated.
"Creating products for women based on real need creates a virality that is hard to recreate with other demographics," she said. "These women aren't just buying their products, they are selling them to their communities and friends. We call that 'word of mom," Hirschhorn said. "It's a really big untapped opportunity," she added.
As a former venture investor, Strober said it is important to accept that "people are not dying to invest in women's health," but she said when you can show the growth that companies like Midi Health are posting now, that won't matter. "We are the fastest-growing digital health company, probably ever, quite honestly," she said. "We are growing insanely fast because women really need access to this care and can't get it elsewhere," she added.
It is the financial model that Midi Health can put in front of investors to demonstrate the size of the growth opportunity that makes the case. Similar to the "virality" experienced by Frida, Strober says the business model does build on itself. "Once you take care of one thing for women they come back to you for something else, and if you develop this trusted platform for them, where they become your long-term patient, that is a good business," she said.
"We don't say it's a women's business, we say it's a really good business," she added.
That opportunity and the unfiltered realities of parenthood have now grown Frida to more than 150 products, covering everything from conception to post-partum and breastfeeding care, and beyond. "My four children are a hotbed of inspiration and my 'snot sucking' days are almost over," Hirschhorn said. But she added, "The same problems exist, you just need a different toolkit."
At Midi Health, Strober says the next big opportunity to unlock is making connections between menopause health and longevity. "If you take care of yourself in your 40s you can really prevent a lot of the diseases that come in your 80s, and so we have been thinking a lot about this longevity market," Strober said. "It's all bros, all the bros who are out there and talking about wanting to live to 150. We just want to take care of ourselves. We don't care about living to 150. We just want to be healthy grandmas," she said.
"What do we do, how do we take care of our brains and bones and hearts to age in a healthy way?" she said.
Strober says there are many steps women's health companies will help women take in their 40s, 50s and 60s to better answer that question.