Women's Health Is One of the Biggest Opportunities of Our Generation: Notes From Dubai.

Published: 2025

I spent time at two of Dubai's biggest technology and health events recently — GITEX Global and Expand North Star, followed by WHX Dubai — and came away more convinced than ever that women's health is one of the largest, most underexploited opportunities of our generation.

Dubai events are their own particular experience. They are less like conferences and more like small festivals — I genuinely could not feel my feet after WHX. But the scale reflects something real: a growing, well-resourced ecosystem taking women's health seriously as both a health priority and a commercial opportunity.

The innovation on show

At GITEX and Expand North Star, I gravitated — as I always do — toward the women's health and leadership content. One innovation that stood out was Joii, a femtech company using AI to turn periods into health insights. This is exactly the direction I believe the space needs to move: treating menstrual data not as something to be tracked for its own sake, but as a genuine source of health intelligence that can inform earlier intervention and better outcomes.

WHX Dubai went further, dedicating an entire stage to women's health for a full day. I was glued to it. Dr Helen O'Neill of Hertility gave what I can only describe as a heroic presentation — honest and genuinely controversial discussion on menopause and HRT, of the kind that too rarely happens on a main stage. Founders pitched innovations ranging from continuous hormone tracking to new alternatives to pessaries (finally) to culturally sensitive menopause education and support.

I also got to visit the clinic of Nabta Health at a smaller, more intimate event. Nabta is combining digital, at-home, and in-clinic care for women across fertility, pregnancy, and menopause — all under one roof in Dubai, with a particular focus on getting care to those who need it most across the Middle East and Africa. That combination of digital and physical, premium and access-focused, is one of the more thoughtful models I have seen.

The funding gap that is also an opportunity

Here is the statistic that frames the whole picture. Women-led startups receive only around 1.2% of venture capital funding across the MENA region, according to the World Economic Forum. That is a staggering under-allocation given the size of the market women's health represents and the returns that well-designed women's health businesses can generate.

But as a panel I watched pointed out, the barriers to starting have genuinely fallen. The technology and the ecosystem now exist at our fingertips. And there are few places quite like Dubai to innovate, build, and integrate yourself into a thriving, welcoming, and genuinely exciting entrepreneurial community.

The funding gap is real, and it is a problem. It is also, for anyone willing to build in this space, one of the clearest signs of an underserved market I can point to. Under-allocated capital plus enormous unmet need is the textbook definition of an opportunity.

Why events like these are worth the exhaustion

Let me be honest: events can be draining, and often they are not worth it. But listening to extraordinary women speak with honesty about the hardest topics in women's health — and being among people who are just as passionate about this as I am — is sometimes exactly what you need.

I came away inspired, energised, and more convinced than ever that women's health is not a niche. It is one of the biggest opportunities of our generation, and the people building in it right now are early to something that is going to be very large indeed.