Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June 24, 2026.
Women’s health is a global public health issue. That may seem obvious to say, but despite women making up about half of the total population, women’s healthcare has long been underfunded. Of the total amount of money spent on medical research and development in 2020, only 5% was allocated toward women’s health research, with 4% going toward women’s cancers and 1% to other health conditions women experience.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s budgetary cuts are having a major impact on scientific research in the U.S., negatively impacting research focused on the health of people assigned female at birth, a field that has long been hampered by explicit and implicit assumptions that people assigned male — white males in particular — represent a kind of medical default.
Philanthropic funding for women’s healthcare has largely focused on reproductive and sexual health. This is, of course, a critical area of funding, especially given the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade. There has also been an increase in funding for maternal health. But there’s still a lot more that funders can do.
For one, philanthropy can support efforts to close some of the longstanding gaps in women’s health. Black women, for instance, are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, and very often receive poorer treatment. And although heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. overall, women are often underdiagnosed and have poorer outcomes than men.
Conditions that are specific to women, such as polyendochrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) — formerly known as PCOS — endometriosis, and menopause receive little research funding. Even conditions that impact all genders face a significant gender gap in health research funding. For example, while two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients are women, only 12% of Alzheimer’s research goes to projects that focus on women.
Given the sharp rise in billionaire fortunes and the fact that, in many cases, women are leading efforts to give that money away, it’s perhaps surprising we aren’t seeing more ultra-rich women making women’s health a centerpiece of their giving. But there are still a few names to know who are working in this space.
Melinda French Gates
By far the most prominent billionaire donor backing women’s health today, French Gates has become a powerhouse funder in her own right in the two years since her departure from the Gates Foundation, focusing especially on issues that impact women and girls.
In a recent LinkedIn post, French Gates said that women’s health has always been at the heart of her philanthropy, as we saw with the Gates Foundation’s work on reproductive and maternal health during her time there. More recently, her giving vehicle Pivotal launched Action for Women’s Health, a $250 million open call managed by Lever for Change to fund organizations working to improve women’s mental and physical health. Now concluded, the initiative supported more than 80 organizations in 22 countries.
In addition to her ongoing support around contraceptive access and maternal health, French Gates is further expanding her women’s health support. This month, she announced she was donating $215 million in new funding for women’s health, broadening her work to include menopause and midlife issues. Pivotal’s special initiative on Women’s Health and Well-Being is focusing on two periods in a woman’s life: her reproductive years and midlife. This work will include expanding access to reproductive care, integrating mental health into maternal care, improving menopause care, and catalyzing funding in women’s health research.
“At a time when women’s rights are under attack and too many women are dying during pregnancy and childbirth, I remain deeply committed to my longstanding work in reproductive and maternal health,” French Gates recently wrote in the New York Times.
A few examples of Pivotal’s grants include $10 million to the Menopause Society, $50 million to Wellcome Leap as part of a $100 million joint funding partnership to further women’s health research, and $40 million to Co-Impact to support local organizations combining mental health into maternal and primary care systems.
French Gates and her daughter, Phoebe Gates, are also supporting the Women’s Health Co-Lab, a collaborative philanthropic fund that is looking to mobilize $100 million to improve the health and agency of women and girls around the globe, specifically around maternal health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender-based violence.
Over the past two years, French Gates has donated more than $600 million to support women’s health.
MacKenzie Scott
Much of MacKenzie Scott’s funding for health and healthcare tends to be more general versus specifically focused on women and girls. She has, for instance, funded a number of organizations working to ensure underserved communities can access healthcare. But Scott has also made big gifts to organizations focused on women’s health issues, particularly around maternal health and addressing racial healthcare disparities.
In 2022, Scott donated $275 million to Planned Parenthood’s national office and 21 Planned Parenthood affiliates. It was the organization’s largest-ever commitment from a single donor. According to Planned Parenthood’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, the funding supports efforts to “advance health equity by eliminating racial and structural barriers” for patients where Planned Parenthood works.
That same year, Scott also donated to Black Women’s Health Imperative, which works to improve the health and wellness of Black women and girls throughout the nation. Its areas of focus include maternal health, reproductive health, rare diseases and menstrual equity. Scott also awarded $3.5 million to HealthConnect One, which supports healthy pregnancies, births and breastfeeding in Black, brown and Indigenous communities.
Scott’s other grantees in this space include the National Birth Equity Collective, Commonsense Childbirth, and GirlTrek, among others.
Alexandra Cohen
Alexandra “Alex” Cohen, wife of hedge fund owner and manager Steve Cohen, leads both the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation and the Amazin’ Mets Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the New York Mets, which she and her husband own. The Cohens have a long history of funding healthcare. As we recently wrote, the couple’s expansive philanthropic involvement and growing fortune point to lots of potential for more giving, with Alex in the lead.
In 2024, Alex Cohen announced the launch of the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation’s new Women’s Health Portfolio, which is focused on menopause. That year, the foundation awarded a total of $4.7 million to women’s health. That included support for “The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause,” a film that highlights “how a lack of public dialogue, clinical bias, and gaps in research” have caused a health crisis that’s left millions of women suffering without sufficient support.
Other Cohen grants for women’s health include $175,000 to Let’s Talk Menopause — a nonprofit organization that seeks to change the conversation around menopause so women can get access to both the information and healthcare that they need — and $5 million to the Menopause Society to help its NextGen Now Initiative create comprehensive, digital training programs so healthcare professionals can improve care for women going through menopause.
Nicole Shanahan
Another interesting, albeit at times controversial, name to know is Nicole Shanahan, the attorney and entrepreneur who was married to Google cofounder Sergey Brin from 2018 to 2023. She was also Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate during the 2024 presidential elections. According to Forbes, Shanahan’s net worth is around $1.5 billion.
Shanahan’s philanthropic vehicle is the Bia-Echo Foundation, which she founded in 2019. When it comes to women’s healthcare, Shanahan is focused on expanding reproductive longevity, and she has pledged to donate $100 million toward that cause.
In 2018, Shanahan provided $6 million in seed funding to the Buck Institute for Research on Aging to establish the first Center for Female Reproductive Longevity and Equality. She donated an additional $7.4 million to the center in research grants. She also provided funding to help establish the Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality at the National University of Singapore.
Shanahan is a critic of IVF. Although there is extensive research showing that IVF is safe and regulated, Shanahan has called it “a commercial endeavor” and “one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today.”
Her criticism is personal. As reported in the New Yorker, Shanahan was diagnosed with PCOS, a syndrome which can cause infertility, before she was 30. A few years later, as she was trying to conceive with her then-husband, she was told she wouldn’t be a good candidate for IVF due to her diagnosis. She eventually conceived naturally and gave birth to a baby girl, but the experience left her frustrated over the lack of guidance she was given. This led to her funding toward women’s health and reproductive longevity.
Note that the Bia-Echo Foundation’s tax filings show minimal charitable disbursements over the past couple of years, and the foundation’s website appears to have been taken down. Still, Shanahan has not walked back her $100 million commitment, and it’s likely she continues to give through DAFs or other vehicles.
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Looking beyond billionaire women, there are other major funders supporting women’s healthcare, though again, philanthropy’s efforts as a whole don’t measure up to the scale of the challenges.
Though she’s not a confirmed billionaire in her own right, Susie Buffett, Warren’s daughter, is a key name to know. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, where she chairs the board, is one of the biggest funders of reproductive health and rights around the globe. It funds abortion and contraceptive access, organizing for reproductive rights, and research and development. Its grantmaking, which already stood at around $1.4 billion in 2024, will likely grow to a vast degree when Warren Buffett passes away and his fortune flows into the hands of his children to disburse.
Melinda may no longer be there, but the Gates Foundation dedicates a portion of its vast grantmaking toward women’s health. Last year, the foundation announced a five-year, $2.5 billion commitment through 2030 to accelerate research and development focused on women’s health across five areas: obstetric care and maternal immunization, maternal health and nutrition, gynecological and menstrual health, contraceptive innovation, and sexually transmitted infections.
A few other funders to know include the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the new Women’s Health Co-Lab. As with the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, most of these funders’ grantmaking is focused on reproductive health.
Continued funder support for reproductive health and what seems like a recent increase in funding for menopause and midlife is encouraging, but there’s still a long way to go to close gendered healthcare gaps. Given the growing number of billionaires and their ever-increasing wealth, it will be interesting to see who, if anyone, enters the space next.
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