The Market is the Medium: Femtech Capital as Politics After Dobbs

• In Event: 50462 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Innovation and the Market

Abstract

Following the loss of the federal right to abortion provided by Roe vs. Wade, a blatant
attack on reproductive freedom, an already-underway trend in “social impact venture
capital” and gender equity accelerated: according to industry sources, investment poured
into women's health start-ups. Women’s health venture capitalists (VCs) and start-up
founders emphasize that they identify as advocates for gender equality, seeking to correct
gendered health asymmetries. One method to address this is through investing in
scientific knowledge production that addresses the systematic erasure of birthing people
in scientific knowledge production. Efficient and potentially lucrative biotech/digital
technology markets are one focus for such investors. Drawing on economic sociologist
Zelizer’s “moral markets” approach and critiques of neoliberal feminist logics, this
research explores Post-Roe VC investment in women’s health tech, particularly abortion
care, as a case of market-mediated resistance to state oppression. It asks: Does post-Roe
investment in the women’s health tech industry represent a form of (capitalistic) feminist
politics in response to legal attacks on birthing people? What is the role and motivation of
the investors who advance femtech products? How might this indicate a changing role of
politics in the private-sector and its relationship to the state within the current context of
neoliberalism and rising right-wing extremism? Using participant observation at industry
events (N = 11) and in-depth interviews with women’s health funders, founders and
biotechnologists (N = 22), I interrogate both how the loss of a civil right may have
directed flows of capital and how the logic of “asset manager capitalism” is filtered back
into feminist imaginaries. In this I aim to advance our understanding of an emergent
phenomenon in socio-technical studies (STS), social movements and socio-economics.

Author

• Edith Hollander, University of Southern California