Most women know the pap smear routine procedure well: legs up in stirrups, a paper sheet over the lower abdomen as your OBGYN inserts a cold, duckbill-shaped metal object to hold open your vaginal walls while they collect cell samples or look for anything abnormal. It’s a critical exam to detect infections, cervical cancer, and other gynecological issues early. But the tool your doctor’s using — the speculum — hasn’t been updated in 200 years and is, frankly, archaic.
That’s all about to change. Thanks to two Dutch women, the vaginal speculum is finally getting a much-needed refresh after causing women almost two centuries of unnecessary pain and suffering. Engineers Ariadna Izcara Gual and Tamara Hoveling designed the Lilium, which offers a less scary option for regular vaginal exams.
Unlike the current metal speculum, this new version is made of flexible, medical-grade TPV rubber, with flower-like petals that gently open the vaginal walls. The updated speculum can also be self-inserted — like you’d apply a tampon — or can be inserted by a health professional. It’s also easier to clean and is safer to reuse than the older design.
This gynecological innovation couldn’t have come sooner. About 35 percent of women say they experience fear, anxiety, or pain associated with routine pap smears — leading some to delay or put off the important exam altogether. One of the biggest issues women complain about? The design of the speculum itself. Izcara Gual says: “Some of the women I interviewed indicate that they feel pain at the insertion and even removal of the device. And it is more than that. It is about the ‘gun’ shape, the cold and uneasy feel, the emotions.”
In addition to its patient-empowering construction, the Lilium’s three-petal design improves cervix visualization and eases usability by opening it outward like rays from the sun — an improvement over the old model, which consists of two cold metal blades. But this invention is more than just a less painful option for women; it’s a reminder of how women’s pain isn’t a factor when men design healthcare tools for women’s bodies.
The vaginal speculum is not the only instance of this major disconnect. Consider this gruesome example: The first chainsaws were originally invented not to help lumberjacks, but doctors.
Yes, you read that right. According to Principles Of Midwifery, Or Puerperal Medicine, which was published in 1785, the original chainsaw was invented by Scottish doctors John Aitken and James Jeffray initially as a “flexible saw” designed to aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy (widening the pubic cartilage) and the removal of disease-laden bone. This flexible saw later became the osteotome, developed by German physician Bernhard Heine in 1830, and was used to “cut away flesh, cartilage, and bone from the mother during childbirth if the baby became stuck in the birth canal.”
And let’s not forget the speculum’s own dark history. It was created by the controversially crowned “father of modern gynecology,” Dr. J. Marion Sims, an American physician who developed his tools by repeatedly experimenting on enslaved Black women who had no consent, anesthesia, or adequate care. The most well-known of this doctor’s victims are Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, who had no choice but to allow their bodies to be the site of violent experiments in gynecology.
My point is, men have never really had a clue when it comes to women’s biological design needs, but they still hold all the power and authority on the subject. And women pay a big, painful price for this power imbalance. When it comes to women’s health, it’s not only research where we lag behind, but also innovation. We need men to stop dictating both.
As we watch women once again be erased from research and funding in real time, let’s not look to men to save us from anything or anywhere. Women are the ones we have been waiting for.
Although Lilium still remains in its early stage, it’s a bright light that finally offers women an alternative to a tool with a traumatic history that has been a source of pain and anxiety for women for nearly 200 years. It shows that changing science and medicine — a system that too often ignores women’s pain — is possible and within our reach.
Anushay Hossain is an author, women’s health advocate, and host of The Pain Gap podcast. You can follow her on Substack and Instagram.
