| IN WOMEN'S HEALTH |
Issue #137 March 23, 2026 |
| →Why talented people stay stuck in women's health — and what actually moves careers forward |
| →One Thing: The wage plateau hits women in their late 30s — right when strategy matters most |
| →Jobs: 130+ new roles across 30 |
Why Talented People Stay Stuck in Women's Health — And What Actually Moves Careers Forward
It's not about credentials. It's not about effort. The women who land the right roles have something most people were never given: a plan, a clear story, and the right people in the room.
The gap between talented and advancing isn't effort. It's positioning. The professionals who move fastest in this industry know exactly who they are, what they bring, and how to tell that story to the right people — before a job is ever posted.
Divya Patel spent over a year trying to break into women's health before we worked together. Strong background in enterprise SaaS. Real passion for the mission. Couldn't get traction. She wasn't just trying to get an interview — she was trying to understand why she wasn't getting interviews. And fix that.
She recently landed a Senior Product Manager role at Evvy. Not because she got lucky. Because she got strategic.
The real reason applications disappear into the void
Each coveted role in women's health gets over 1,000 applications in the first 48 hours. Sending a resume without a strategy isn't a job search. It's a lottery ticket.
The people who break through aren't the most credentialed. They're the ones who got their resume to the top of the pile through a warm introduction. Who were already known as someone delivering impact in the space before the job was posted. Who could walk into an interview and tell a story that made a hiring manager feel certain — not just hopeful.
In the past six months, so many of the people who came through our program had advanced degrees. The degree wasn't the problem. The absence of a positioning strategy was. Nobody had ever helped them answer the questions that actually matter: What is your unique value add? What role is actually right for you? How do you tell your story in a way that lands?
What no one tells you about breaking into this industry
Women's health is a relationship-driven ecosystem. The people who get hired — and promoted — are almost always known quantities before the search begins. That means your network isn't a nice-to-have. It's the mechanism.
Divya understood this. She didn't spray and pray. She built a targeted list of dream companies and reverse-engineered her approach to match. She chose Evvy specifically — and went all in.
"I said I want to work for Priyanka, and I want to work at Evvy. And that's exactly what happened."
— Divya Patel, Senior Product Manager, Evvy
A narrow, focused list combined with the right narrative and timing unlocks doors that 300 cold applications never will. Especially when paired with a warm introduction from someone credible in the ecosystem. That's not luck. That's backchanneling — and it's a learnable skill.
Framing is everything — and most people get it wrong
Divya came in worried that her lack of healthcare, DTC, and startup experience would disqualify her. Instead of letting that stop her, she treated it as a solvable problem.
She translated her enterprise tech background into women's health language — zero-to-one product building, adoption metrics, user empathy. She realized the skills were already there. The framing wasn't.
"Almost everything is zero to one in women's health. No one's built anything. I realized I'd already done this before — I just needed to frame it right."
— Divya Patel, Senior Product Manager, Evvy
Women's health needs builders. The right framing can reposition your existing experience as exactly what this sector is looking for. But most people never do that work. They send the same resume they've always sent and wonder why no one calls back.
The shortcut is structure — not more effort
Divya didn't just apply for her role at Evvy. She built projects. Launched prototypes. Created real traction before a job offer ever came. The people getting hired aren't just applying — they're executing.
Seven years ago I was on the outside of women's health, trying to get in. I went to conferences without a ticket. Cold-messaged founders. Learned everything I could about how this ecosystem actually works. It took me years to figure out what I now teach in four weeks. You can shortcut eight years of hard-won knowledge — if you have the right framework and the right people around you.
The women who advance fastest in this industry aren't working harder than everyone else. They're working from a plan. They know their target role. They've built the assets — the resume, the LinkedIn profile, the pitch, the cover letter — that make hiring managers take notice. They know how to find roles before the rest of the world does. And they know how to interview and negotiate with confidence.
That's what this newsletter is here to give you — the strategy, the patterns, and the real talk about how careers actually advance in women's health. Not more information. A clearer path. And the knowledge that the right move, made deliberately, changes everything.
Want to go deeper?
The Career Mastermind is a 4-week cohort built around a 10-step plan for landing your next role in women's health — with coaching, community, and real accountability. I'll be sharing more about it over the next few weeks. Stay close.
But if you're ready to jump in now — learn more!
Learn More →By 30 years of experience, men out-earn women by 25%. This isn't a pipeline problem — women enter the workforce in roughly equal numbers to men. It's a progression problem. The plateau happens precisely when business fluency starts to matter most: when decisions move from execution to strategy, and when the people in the room are expected to speak the language of finance, operations, and growth.
| 2,498 |
IWH Job Board
Open roles on the IWH job board right now. The market for women's health talent is bigger than most people realize. The question isn't whether jobs exist — it's whether you're positioned to compete for the ones that matter.
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| ~30% |
Rock Health, 2024
Share of women's health startup leadership roles held by women, despite women making up the majority of the patient population. The industry serves women but isn't yet led by them at scale. That gap is both a problem and an opening.
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| $50B+ |
Grand View Research
Projected size of the femtech market by 2030. The companies being built right now are building into one of the fastest-growing segments in healthcare. Getting in — and moving up — while the market is still forming is a career advantage that compounds.
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⚡ Early Bird Ends April 17
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Featured Event
Women's Health Reimbursement Summit
📅 June 1, 3 & 5, 2026 · 3-Day Virtual · New York
The only summit dedicated to cracking the reimbursement code in women's health — bringing together C-suite leaders, payers, and policy experts across three focused sessions. Early bird pricing ends April 17. Register at Early Bird Price → |
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Hiring Now
Maven Clinic, Natera, Sword Health, Progyny, Babylist, Spring Fertility, Carrot Fertility, Equip, Hims & Hers, Ro, Chief, Allara, Origin, Pomelo Care + more
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Roles Include
Clinical, VP & C-Suite, Product, Engineering, Strategy & more
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Updated weekly · Free to access
This week's curated list is a snapshot. IWH Pro members get the full board — 100+ companies, 1,700+ roles, updated every day — plus everything else you need to advance your career in women's health.
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P.S. If this resonated, there's a whole community of women in this industry asking the same questions and building the same fluency together. Come find us at
