Cultural Forces 2025: Fractured Futures

What You’ll Learn

In 2025, people across different gender identities are not just facing different challenges—they are perceiving the world in increasingly different ways. Social media algorithms shape their digital experiences, workplace priorities are diverging, and even healthcare engagement looks vastly different. These gaps aren’t necessarily leading to conflict, but they are creating misunderstandings, where one side struggles to see the pressures and expectations shaping the other’s reality.

This growing gap has major implications for healthcare and pharma. Some patients, particularly women, are demanding better solutions, driving innovation in FemTech and digital health. Others remain hesitant to engage in preventive care, increasing their long-term health risks. Brands and providers must navigate these shifting expectations carefully, recognizing that healthcare is about more than science and access, it’s also about culture, perception, and trust.

Signals of Algorithmic Intervention

Women’s Sports as a Cultural Movement: The explosion of interest in women’s sports, along with ongoing pay-gap debates, reflects shifting cultural priorities and the evolving visibility of female-driven industries​. Women’s elite sports generated over $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2024, a 300% increase since 2021. This surge was driven by landmark events like the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and the Women’s World Cup, which drew unprecedented global audiences.

The Rise of Digital Health for Women: Investments in FemTech, including fertility tracking, menopause care, and reproductive health, signal a new era of women-first healthcare innovation​. Companies like Maven Clinic have attracted substantial funding, with Maven raising $125 million in late 2024, bringing its valuation to $1.7 billion. This investment underscores a growing recognition of the need for comprehensive women’s healthcare solutions.

Health Information Seeking Online: Women in 2025 are still more likely to visit health and well-being sites than men, with 88% of women accessing these sites compared to 80% of men. This pattern is particularly pronounced among visitors to Healthline, WebMD, and other medical-information platforms.

What This Means for Healthcare in 2025

Patients: Women will continue driving health innovation and engagement, leading to more personalized digital health tools and pharmaceutical campaigns designed for their needs. Even today, women are still underrepresented in clinical trials. Men, meanwhile, may remain under-engaged, increasing risks for preventable conditions. Addressing these gaps means ensuring both genders feel seen and supported in their healthcare journeys.

Healthcare Providers (HCPs): Doctors will need to tailor their communication strategies, recognizing that men and women engage with healthcare differently. When working with women as patients, the focus may be on cutting through decision fatigue and validating their proactive efforts. For men, providers may need new strategies to encourage earlier engagement, breaking down resistance to preventive care. It's important to note that because more women than men are enrolling in medical school, the demographic of physicians is changing.

Pharma and Marketers: The rise of women’s sports, FemTech, and digital health engagement presents massive opportunities for targeted marketing and strategic partnerships. However, brands must ensure they don’t alienate male consumers, who still require healthcare engagement strategies that resonate with their needs and behaviors.

The Future of Fractured Futures

As these gender gaps widen, healthcare will need to adapt. By 2026, we may see a world where certain groups drive most healthcare innovation and digital adoption, while others remain less engaged until later stages of illness, widening the gap in outcomes. 

Klick Health is actively engaging with Fractured Futures, using creativity to address the evolving gender divide in healthcare with three recent campaigns: The award-winning campaign “The Congregation” for podHER turned a hardcover book into protest posters and a scannable map for reproductive rights, earning global recognition. Klick Health’s film The Trial also tackles gender-focused issues. Finally, Love Captured is a new, experiential dual-screen short film in support of global anti-trafficking organization The Exodus Road.

Pharma and healthcare brands that bridge this divide rather than deepen it will be the ones that succeed. The challenge is about more than offering different products; instead, it’s about understanding the evolving ways people perceive health, value care, and make decisions in an increasingly fragmented world.