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Not medical advice. The Atlas is not a substitute for a clinician who can examine you.

Testosterone in Women & the Female-Androgen Market

Androgens are not a male-only hormone

Evidence grade 3 of 5, Mixed. Read how the Atlas grades evidence.

The written rationale for this grade is still being prepared.

FDA
No FDA-approved female testosterone product (US)

Reference only. Not medical advice.

What can go wrong

Off-label dosing risks virilization (acne, hair changes, voice deepening) if overdosed. The female-'optimization' clinic market raises the same incentive concerns as male TRT.

This is something to take to a clinician. The Atlas can tell you what is known about testosterone in women & the female-androgen market in general. It cannot tell you what is happening in your body, and the difference matters most for exactly the symptoms that bring people to this page.

For completeness in any encyclopedia of testosterone: women produce and require testosterone, at roughly a tenth to a twentieth of male levels, and it contributes to libido, energy, bone, and muscle. The best-evidenced use of testosterone in women is for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in postmenopausal women, where a global consensus statement supports low-dose testosterone, yet there is no FDA-approved female testosterone product in the US, so women are dosed off-label with fractions of male products or via menopause/'optimization' clinics. This female-androgen market mirrors the male TRT market's incentive issues and is included here to contextualize testosterone as a human, not exclusively male, hormone.

Women make and need testosterone too, and a market has grown around it.

What people take it for

These are the reasons people give for taking it. They are not effects it has been shown to have.

  • Contextualizes testosterone as a human hormone

What people get wrong

  • Often saidTestosterone is the male hormone

    ActuallyWomen produce and depend on testosterone too; it has an evidence-based role in postmenopausal sexual desire. The male-only framing is biologically inaccurate.

Who profits, and who pushes back

Nobody is named here yet, because we have not done that work on this entry. Read that as unfinished. Somebody almost certainly sells this, and somebody almost certainly disputes it. Assume both until we have checked.

At a glance

Female level
~5-10% of male testosterone
Best evidence
Low-dose T for postmenopausal HSDD
US status
No FDA-approved female testosterone product

What this entry does not yet cover

What follows is unfinished work on our side, not a finding about Testosterone in Women & the Female-Androgen Market. A short entry is not a safe entry.

  • Timeline. We have not built the dated record of research and regulatory events.
  • Cost and market. We have not documented what it sells for or who sells it.
  • Supply chain. We have not mapped where it is made.
  • Who uses it. We have not documented the user groups.
  • What could change. No forward-looking summary yet.
  • How it compares. We have not set it against the alternatives.
  • Children and teenagers. We have not checked what is known about younger people.
  • Where we land. We have not taken a position on this yet.

Sources

The studies below are named and described, but not linked. You cannot open them from here and check our reading against them, which means this page is our summary of the literature rather than a document you can verify. Weigh it accordingly until the links exist.

The studies that matter

  • Global Consensus Position Statement on testosterone for women2019

    Supported low-dose testosterone for postmenopausal HSDD; found insufficient evidence for other indications