The Mycenaean

For hundreds of years, women’s health has been immensely overlooked. Not only their health but the research surrounding it. Male doctors, scientists, and researchers have avoided female subjects in their research for a multitude of reasons – all leading to inaccurate and misleading information about the female body. 

Despite women making up 50% of the global population and outnumbering men in the United States since 1946, they are still considered an aberration. Although we’ve made progress in female research, many companies and research organizations continue to make subpar excuses for why they don’t include women in their studies. These include costs, hormones, and even reproductive potential. 

Female research isn’t just limited to humans. Researchers even made poor justifications for avoiding female mice in their study. The National Library of Medicine explains, “Many researchers believe that use of females will hamper research because of the need for increased sample sizes, and increased costs.” And although costs are a big part of all scientific research, the study can only be accurate and relevant for 50% of the population if female subjects are included, meaning companies need to wait until they have the adequate funding and resources to support both males and females in their research.

Male researchers have used the excuse of “…women’s hormones, claiming that females were more difficult to study because of menses and therefore should be left out of the research equation entirely,” Northwell Health explains. And while women’s hormones are unpredictable and often difficult to control, it makes studying them even more necessary.

The final and arguably most obscure excuse is the possibility of reproduction. In 1977, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created a policy that prohibited women of reproductive potential from Phases 1 and 2 of clinical trials. The policy was interpreted by researchers broadly – they would begin intentionally excluding nearly all premenopausal women, which even included those who were on birth control, had sterile partners, or desisted from sex.

Many women go to the doctor with a concern and hope for a solution, but leave feeling disregarded. Most often, a woman’s condition or disease isn’t diagnosed, and instead blamed on her menstrual cycle or hormones. The New York Times explains, “their symptoms are more likely to be written off as anxiety — or…as being all in their head.” Thanks to the lack of research, women aren’t taken seriously in the medical field as professionals or patients.

Thousands of skewed studies affecting both men and women give rise to women to be incessantly being underdiagnosed, undertreated, and even mistreated. As scientists have begun conducting more research on women, we’ve discovered that many show different symptoms or react differently to many disorders and diseases compared to men. 

AAMC explains, “Failure to study medications and other interventions in a broad sampling of women has contributed to women experiencing adverse effects from medications at twice the rate of men.” For instance, women with metal hip replacements are 29% more likely to face complications than men who have gone through the same procedure, likely due to anatomical differences and insufficient testing in women. 

Regardless of the lack of research, many companies, schools, and organizations are working to improve the absence of female studies. For example, Northwell Health “has been on the forefront of studying gender differences and disparities for a number of years.” Their primary goal has been to train and support female scientists – resulting in more studies that surround women and the female body.

Thanks to organizations like Northwell Health, we have made progress in the right direction. New studies on women are released every day focusing on their physical, emotional, and mental health. As the world diversifies, so does the research surrounding not only women, but minorities of all kinds.