By Dr Vanessa Vallely OBE

If you were buying a period-tracking app, a hormone treatment for menopause, or even a new bra, would you want women involved in the product and the overall experience?

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Women understand women; it’s that simple. Lived experience is something you can never study in the same way that you can live through it. Women understand gender nuances that come with being a woman, good and bad, and crucially, they know how to prevent gender bias from subconsciously being fed into technology.

Women and diversity in tech isn’t a nice-to-have - it’s a risk to overlook. Women don’t just make up the diversity numbers; they represent over half of the population and bring a perspective men simply can’t.

Looking back at tech fails, early versions of prominent health apps omitted basic physiological tracking features like menstrual cycle monitoring, reflecting a tech design process that treated male biology as the default while overlooking women's specific health needs.

In developing early automated facial analysis and recognition software, tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, and Megvii built systems that were highly........

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