This excerpt is from the Invisible Women Newsletter. Click here to join the 50k+ subscribers and read the full article.
Good morning, GFPs, to all 50,000 of you! Well, more than that now; I think it was very unreasonable of you to not have reached 50k exactly on a Monday morning, but I guess we’ll just have to let that slide. And special thanks to my paid subscribers who make all this work possible ?
This week I’ve been mainly enjoying the US Republicans, who fresh from their triumph in denigrating all women who haven’t given birth have decided that it’s a good idea to christen the new Democrat VP, Tim Walz, “Tampon Tim” because of his radical and controversial programme of…checks notes…stocking menstrual products in school toilets. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like this is simply an obvious way to combat the fact that one in five American girls have either left school early or missed it entirely when they have their period because they can’t afford menstrual products. And far be it from me to question the wisdom of the GOP’s advisers, but, guys, using tampon as an insult really isn’t helping to shake those anti-woman vibes.
This week’s newsletter includes a gender data gap of the week looking at what happens when a pharmaceutical company launched another product aimed at women and sexual dysfunction but without the proper testing.
As I wrote, “Desperate women for whom mainstream medicine has no answers are an easy mark for predatory capitalism — and what infuriates me the most about all of this is that it is the women themselves who are often blamed and/or mocked for resorting to unproven remedies when the real blame lies with a medical establishment that remains uninterested in researching our bodies.“
I also highlight the the first purely digital FemTech unicorn (that is a company valued at more than $1 billion)! And, drum-roll please…it was founded and is currently led by men! And had to settle with the FTC over allegations that it sold women’s personal health data to third-party companies including Facebook! And is currently facing a class-action lawsuit in Canada over the alleged selling of sensitive personal information!