The ‘World’s Most Popular Female Health App’ was Made By Men, For Men

Words: Bella Wigley

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Flo Health, a popular period-tracking app, recently secured $200 million in funding from General Atlantic, making it the first purely digital femtech app to achieve unicorn status: a title bestowed upon any privately held startup company that reaches a value of over $1 billion. While this might seem like a huge win for women’s health technology, the fact that the app was founded, developed and funded predominantly by men raises questions - not just about how successfully it meets the needs of its primary users, but who stands to gain from technology collecting data around female health.

The UK has been found to have the largest female health gap in the G20 and the 12th largest globally. In part, this is because medical research by and for women is not given nearly the same amount of funding as research for and by men. It’s the shocking reality that while 31% of women are living with a reproductive health issue, only 2% of medical research funding goes toward reproductive health – and this medical inequality is widespread. Given the prevalence of male influence over health in this country, perhaps it makes sense that Flo falls short of the mark when it comes to addressing the actual needs of women and people who menstruate. Nothing demonstrated this better than the app’s new, ‘view-only’ cycle dashboard feature for male partners, as well as the marketing campaign surrounding it. 

Let’s start with the glaringly obvious heteronormativity that Flo favours. Like many period-tracking apps, Flo is pink as hell and obsessed with pregnancy – even after specifically checking a box to say I wasn’t trying to conceive. And while, yes, the daily ‘chances of pregnancy’ popups could be easily ignored, details like these signal how Flo skims over the diverse desires of its queer, single, or infertile users, as well as those simply not interested in having kids. Flo for Partners solidifies this heteronormative stance, comfortably advertising as ‘designed to support a male-female couple’. This positioning is not only exclusionary but underscores the primary issue I have with the feature as a whole.
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In an email I received from around the launch of its partner's feature, Flo references romantic partners solely as ‘he’, asking in a giddy, bubblegum-chewing tone, ‘What if he knew when your period was due?’. Flo’s copy goes on with a knowing wink, ‘we’ll explain your cycle in a way he understands’ – boys, eh, what are they like! 

For me, the male-centric marketing around Flo for Partners seems to simultaneously infantilise men and contribute to the idea that periods are a mysterious phenomenon that make women moody, unpredictable, and unknowable – feeding into old cliches to reel men in. Much of Flo for Partners hinges on the goal of empowering male partners through menstrual surveillance, promoting a ‘view-only’ dashboard of female partners’ cycle predictions.  Ultimately, it’s this shift in focus from ‘her’ to ‘him’ in both language and app structure that doesn’t sit right.

According to Flo’s founder, Dmitry Gurski, “men have +40% retention rates than their partners” when it comes to Flo for Partners. Stats like these ring slightly more insidious when we take a look at the role of sex in the marketing of Flo for Partners, and the underlying promise that the cycle dashboard will get men more of it. I received two separate emails promoting Flo for Partners. One sold the fact that, by using the dashboard, ‘he’ll know when your sex drive might be high’ and another said the feature could be used to ‘plan surprise date nights on non-period days’ – both paired with spicy chilli emoji. This messaging reinforces negative stereotypes about periods, implying that menstruating people are less desirable, don’t want to go on dates, or that period sex is taboo. 

The view-only dashboard makes all this even more unnerving. As a one-way system, this dashboard feels like a form of surveillance. In her paper, Intimate Surveillance, Karen Levy writes that “The act of measurement is not neutral. Every technology of measurement and classification legitimates certain forms of knowledge and experience, while rendering others invisible.” Such seems to be the case with Flo.

“Ultimately, it’s this shift in focus from ‘her’ to ‘him’ in both language and app structure that doesn’t sit right.”

Flo for Partners essentially rebrands female partners' menstrual cycles as a cheat sheet for better sex. It reports potential changes based on your cycle to ‘him’, including a higher sex drive (if you hadn’t picked up on that already) among other symptoms. While tracking cycles could be useful for couples trying to conceive or simply communicate, this information has real potential to be harmful. It’s easy to see how sharing data like this might lead to dismissing women's genuine emotions because they’re ‘on their period’ or ascribing sexual desire to a day in the month rather than their actual experience. 

The issue isn't that Flo for Partners incorporates ‘better’ sex as part of its offering. Rather, it's that this focus seems to supersede the app's principal purpose as a ‘period and cycle tracker’ (as it’s named on app stores). According to their onboarding information, 90% of women sign up to Flo simply to ‘know when my period is coming’, but Flo for Partners seems to prioritise men's interests over these primary user needs. And in a LinkedIn statement, CEO Gurski clearly reveals the motivation behind the new feature, stating "it makes our total addressable market MUCH MUCH bigger because of men!" 

This shift towards male users and content suggests that women's needs have been compromised to expand Flo Health's market reach. The app's evolution raises questions about whether it still prioritises its core user base or if profit potential is driving its direction. And, with so many of its one-star reviews citing paywall after paywall as the reason for their bad blood with Flo, it’s hard to see past money as a motivator. 

Perhaps this is unsurprising given period-tracking apps’ penchant for selling data. In 2019, Flo came under fire when a Wall Street Journal investigation exposed its sharing of sensitive user data with Facebook – a breach which resulted in a settlement with the FTC, an ongoing Canadian lawsuit, and a public promise to strengthen its privacy policies. Paired with widespread data anxiety following Roe vs Wade, this legal saga drove Flo to introduce an ‘anonymous mode’ along with its vow never to sell intimate data to third parties. But recent investigations reveal that period-tracking data could be requested to police illegal abortions in the UK – a move allowed by Flo’s updated policy. 

Flo’s run-in with data exploitation paints a disturbing picture of its priorities. While it’s true that the health app has tightened up its policy, the fact that it ever needed to – along with the legal holes it’s left behind – goes to show that, at the end of the day, its founders value profit over privacy. This ignorance is compounded in Flo for Partners, a feature which ultimately still hinges on the sharing of intimate data - this time consensually with your partner. Does this feature actually benefit most of Flo’s users? Or is it just another revenue maker for the app’s (mostly male) shareholders? With its core users left unsatisfied at best, and exploited and excluded at worst, the flaws of period-tracking apps like Flo feel like yet another let-down in the gaping space that is the UK’s gender health disparity.