A female engineer at Harvard, Ridhi Tariyal, is working on developing a testing device that extracts menstrual blood from tampons in order to monitor various health concerns such as fertility, diseases and sexually transmitted infections.
This new device could change the course of women’s health forever. The possibility of it being sold is exciting.
However, Tariyal’s experience as a female engineer trying to get funding for new female health technology highlights sexism and the disparity in female representation in the health technology industry.
Taryial, in collaboration with her business partner Stephen Gire, has patented a device that contains menstrual flow and converts it into medically testable samples to provide women with at-home testing for various medical conditions.
Many people, including Taryial, wonder why such technology hasn’t been pursued before considering menstrual blood contains vital medical information.
The reason Taryial is the first engineer to pursue this research is not only due to her experience of living in a female body.
But is also due to a lack of concern for improved female health technologies a male dominated field.
Since 1976, men have invented thre out of every four patents on tampons.
While it is easy to discuss the absurdity of men designing products only used by women, the reason for this absurdity stems from the fact that female inventors face obstacles to patenting that male inventors don’t.
A 2012 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found 92 percent of all patent holders are men.
A 2006 study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that women in the life sciences, such as healthy technology, are patenting at a rate that is 60 percent less than men.
A large reason why women patent less has to do with the fact that women don’t have the social networks and connections men do.
Professor Toby Stuart of the Haas School of Business at University of California Berkeley spoke about this phenomenon by saying, “A prominent male faculty member may make noise at a university’s technology transfer office if he doesn’t get what he wants, and he also has relationships outside the university and he’s more likely to know venture capitalists.
Meanwhile, a female professor doesn’t tend to know as many people in the industry” reported the New York Times.
Aside from not having as many connections, female engineers and scientists have a hard time getting funding for female health technology, just like Taryial and her business partner, Gire.
Taryial recalls her experience in finding funding and told the New York Times in an April 4 article, “Someone told us that the product would only help women, and women are only half the population- so what was the point?”
Hopefully everyone can see the benefit in helping half the human population with at-home and minimally invasive-medical testing.
Helping any percentage of the population with medical issues is important for the progress of the human race.
Taryial’s story of struggle to get her new female health technology patented and funded demonstrates the need for female engineers in the life sciences.
Not only do we need more females in life sciences, we need them to design technology for female health.
The more women represented in the sciences, the easier it will be for women to create a community and network that can begin to overcome the disadvantages of being female in this world.
rcm2@indiana.edu
@RachelCMiller1
