Women have contributed immensely to the fields of medical innovation and research. Consider, for example, 19th-century nurse Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of modern nursing – or Patricia Goldman-Rakic, a researcher instrumental in scientific understanding of conditions affecting the brain, like cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, or Parkinson’s disease. Women have been critical in understanding how the human body works, and what can be done to care for it.
Why is it, then, that we know so little about women’s health itself? In a world where women are empowered to gain qualifications and enter healthcare professions, such as through online masters programs in counseling psychology, it’s clear that research has failed them – with substantial deficiencies in what we know about women’s health when compared to their male counterparts.
What are the causes of this? Is it stereotyping, a lack of funding, or something else entirely? Let’s dive into the world of women’s health – where the gaps are, what the solutions are, and how all researchers should be aware of this gap in what we know versus what we should know.
A History of Test Exclusion
Women have typically had to fight for their inclusion in society. From the suffrage movement from Seneca Falls through to the Nineteenth Amendment, it has often taken decades of agitation and protest to exact change.
For the right to conduct clinical trials on women, the fight took much, much longer. Historically, women were considered harder to test, due to a lack of understanding about female hormones and the reproductive system. This lack of understanding extended to tests involving lab mice – researchers of the time found themselves unwilling to research female mice, fearing that hormones and the reproductive system could skew results (even if they were otherwise cleared).
This history of excluding women from tests was an issue that lasted for many decades – and with little action from stakeholders to try and address it, women’s health research was often left by the wayside. It was put further behind, as the direct result of the thalidomide scandal of the mid-twentieth-century.
The Thalidomide Scandal
In the 1950s, a Swiss pharmaceutical company by the name of CIBA developed a product known as thalidomide which was introduced to the broader market as a sedative as well as a morning sickness cure for pregnant women. At the time, testing found that the product did not have a toxic effect on humans – however, testing was not conducted on women.
Introduced to some 46 countries, without adequate testing on women, particularly pregnant women, a shocking discovery was made. Thalidomide had what was called a teratogenic effect on the human body – if taken by a pregnant woman in the early stages of pregnancy, the embryo had a high likelihood of developing defects.
It was estimated that some 10,000 babies were impacted by the usage of thalidomide worldwide, with as many as half dying within months of birth, and others living with these defects and deformities to this day.
The impact had a chilling effect on clinical testing on women – an area of research that was already underfunded and undersupported to begin with. While the US had banned the use of thalidomide as a direct result of the birth defect findings, in 1977, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a directive, banning women of child-bearing age from being involved in clinical trials. This ban would span nearly two decades.
Where Are The Gaps?
When considering the research restrictions that have been in place on women over the decades, it’s clear that there are substantial gaps in what we know about women’s health. Conditions such as endometriosis, for example, have barely been researched – with an estimated 5-10% of women of reproductive age suffering from this condition, many researchers recognize that the condition is underresearched and progressing slowly.
With women living longer than men, but spending more of their lives in poor health, it’s clear that there are opportunities to improve healthcare for women. Some researchers, including McKinsey, note that addressing these shortfalls could result in as much as a $1 trillion improvement across economies worldwide.
How To Fix The Gap
To fix the gender test gap, there are some clear steps that governments need to take to ensure that testing of women’s issues is supported adequately. The first of these measures was addressed in 1993, when Congress passed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, forcing the NIH to accept women and people of color within clinical research unless there was a specific reason not to do so.
This forced the FDA to withdraw its ban on clinical research of child-rearing age – opening the door for testing to understand the impact of conditions that typically affect women, such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Going further, there must be a concerted attempt to invest in research on conditions that impact women more adversely than men. Consider, for example, the data that shows that women are more likely than their male counterparts to die of heart attacks, or that women are much more likely to suffer from conditions such as autoimmune disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
There is much work to be done to address the gaps in women’s health research. It’s clear that, while there have been improvements since 1993, more needs to be done, if there is any hope to understand the impacts of life-threatening health conditions on women. Awareness is often the first step – and by working together, we can hope to drive lasting change.
Leave feedback about this