Beyond the “she-cession:” gender inequity in health research and trials

(NC) Lately, we’ve seen a focus in the media around the economic toll COVID-19 is taking on women across the country. This crisis has been called a “she-cession” by economist Armine Yalnizyan, and its impact will be felt for a long time.

However, there’s a gender inequity issue that’s been hiding in plain sight for years — the gender gap in healthcare, which involves the legacy of inequity in clinical trials and the health research process.

Women have only been required to be included in clinical trials for about 20 years. This means that we have a gap in information on how women react to certain therapies, which leads to women suffering from up to 75 per cent of all adverse drug reactions.

Parallel to this is the issue of women’s health research being chronically underprioritized. Studies have shown that women’s health research is funded less often than men’s, for shorter terms and for lower funding amounts, with less than eight per cent of national funding supporting women’s health research.

And the disparity doesn’t end there. Women researchers themselves, who are most likely to investigate issues pertaining to women’s health, are less likely to receive funding than men.

The lack of research into women’s health is particularly alarming, as the result is a shortage of information around women’s unique health needs, including symptoms and how diseases may present in a woman’s body. This lack of research leads to women’s symptoms being misdiagnosed because the data around their unique physiology simply doesn’t exist.

Fortunately, there are researchers and organizations working to remedy this problem. One such organization is Women’s Health Collective Canada, a first-of-its-kind strategic alliance between three top women’s health foundations in the country. The collective is raising awareness of the legacy of inequity in healthcare and raising funds for urgent research studies that will ensure women’s health research catches up.

Through organizations like this one and women’s health researchers focusing their attention on sex-based results, there’s hope that the next generation of Canadian women will be provided with the standard of care they deserve.