Biological breakthroughs
In the health sector, biological breakthroughs such as nanotechnology (e.g. through embeddable sensors monitoring for health monitoring, personalised medicine or genome sequencing), have the capacity to create new diagnostic methods that will be faster and less expensive than currently available procedures. Given women are often more ‘time poor’ and tend to have lower incomes than men, this change is likely to have a disproportionate impact on women (assuming equal access).
Similarly, in the food and agricultural sector, the use of gene editing to produce drought-resistant produce will (assuming equal access) likely have a disproportionate impact on women, given they make up 45-80 percent of the food-producing workforce in developing countries.
- Opportunity
- medium
Use of biological breakthroughs in developing countries to lower healthcare costs and improve agricultural and health outcomes.
- Risk
- low
Risk of women experiencing a new kind of healthcare inequality.
- Opportunity
- high
- Risk
- medium
Biological breakthroughs can be used in developing countries to improve health outcomes (e.g. through embeddable sensors monitoring for health monitoring, personalised medicine or genome sequencing).
However, new treatments are likely to less affordable, particularly for women, and research and development (R&D) into women’s health is typically lower than into men’s health. As a result, there is a risk that women get ‘left behind’ in the gains of biological breakthroughs.
Gender-smart investors could support improvements in investees’ capacity to leverage biological breakthroughs to enhance women’s economic empowerment by helping them:
- Collaborate with governments, researchers and regulators to ensure products are equitable in their construction and potential clientele (e.g. current genome sequencing databases predominantly focus on individuals of European descent).
- Work to lower the cost of biological breakthroughs to ensure their applicability to developing country settings.
- Rigorously evaluate potential barriers that may inhibit women’s access to new biological breakthroughs and working to tackle these (e.g. lack of official IDs, cost, geographic mobility, etc.).
- Opportunity
- medium
- Risk
- low
Use of biological breakthroughs in developing countries to improve agricultural outcomes (e.g. through gene editing drought-resistant produce).
Gender-smart investors could support investees’ capacity to leverage biological breakthroughs to enhance women’s economic empowerment by helping them:
- Work with governments and researchers to lower the cost of biological breakthroughs to ensure their applicability to developing country settings (e.g. acting to ensure an appropriate focus on staple crops in developing countries).
- Rigorously evaluate potential barriers that may inhibit women’s access to new biological breakthroughs and work to tackle these (e.g. lack of official IDs, cost, geographic mobility, etc.).
