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Medical science is in fact terribly biased against women because the standard baseline is almost always a typical male body
(lemmy.world)
Source for the 7% statistic
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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I don’t doubt that women are underrepresented in medical research, but at the same time I suspect most medical research targets issues that affect both men and women, since that is true of most medical issues. The 7% statistic would be more impactful if we could compare it to the percentage of medical research focused on medical issues specific to men.
Edit: after further consideration, my initial take here isn’t great either, because women face more medical issues specific to their gender. I still think the 7% statistic is a little misleading.
Yep, that 7% doesn't mean the rest is going to research on men specific health, it means that 7% is for women health, an unknown % is for men health and the rest is for human health in general (which is logically the biggest %).
Issues that affect both women and men still often tend to affect both in different ways -- but the majority of medical research tends to just take what works for the standard male body and apply that to everyone regardless of sex instead of investigating sex-specific effects and tailoring solutions around that
Do you have sources for this claim? Every non-gender specific (i.e. gynecology, prostates, etc.) medical study I have ever read has made it clear that they try to sample as close to an even number of men and women as possible.
I'm making this claim from an American standpoint: A famous example is that fewer girls and women are diagnosed with autism, and those that have been are either profoundly autistic or have had to educate their doctors. Girls are usually socialized differently than boys, so some of the criteria for autism just aren't a good fit
that’s a clinical bias, the person above was asking about a research bias.
edit:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/biomedical-research-sex-male-female-animal-human-studies
as of 2019:
I want to know where you think clinical criteria come from
Edit: your article describes a study that found research to be dominated by male biology when it was published 2011. This article found a nine year average delay in updating clinical guidelines. People who were in university to be a doctor within the last ten years are likely still operating on older research, unless they have taken the time to stay up to date.
I have a year left on my BS in Biology. There is so much new research coming out that I read, that I know my classmates don't have the time for. So what we are taught from textbooks is what they learn, and this is a large part of where they get their biases from
clinical bias is not necessarily from the criteria. often the clinician is the one introducing the bias all on their own.
That's fair! From the same perspective, there are significant issues with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders like ADHD and Autism, especially in relation to gender.
But research into that is actively happening, and those issues are specifically recognized and being tackled. Autism in particular was heavily impacted by genuine differences in presentation that naturally reduce the likelihood of social recognition (and therefore reduce the social pressure toward diagnosis):
https://autism.org/women-in-autism/#gender-bias
Don't get me wrong, historical research was terrible. And, to this day misdiagnosis and undertreatment is rampant. Women are less likely to receive adequate treatment for pain and are more likely to face delays in various diagnoses, due to almost entirely social influences like male doctors just not believing their patients. Mental health and psychiatric disorders in particular are obviously heavily impacted by that.
But we also only know those things because of modern research. Studies need representational sampling to get through any IRB, and so the majority of medical research starts with men and women from the beginning, reports any differences in the results, and generally keeps trying until it reaches positive clinical outcomes for both.
In the case of Autism, it was recognized that there was a 4:1 men:women diagnostic ratio, and they kept looking at that number until they found possible explanations why.
At the very least I think that the much larger issue is currently on the other end of the equation - if we could get those positive clinical outcomes actually delivered clinically, rather than theoretically.
"In 2020, only 1% of funding for healthcare research and innovation (beyond oncology) was invested in women's health."
That 7% is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. You don’t even need specific numbers to see how wacky the logic is: who here really believes that 93% of gynecological research is conducted on men? Research into ovarian cancer? Development into drugs for preeclampsia?
If you were I’m going with this… yes, women are massively under represented in medical research that applies to both men and women, and there are problems with that too, such as major differences between cardiovascular issues in men and women. Most people, including doctors and nurses, would not recognize the symptoms of a heart attack in a woman unless they were specifically looking for them.
That's not what that means at all. It means gynecological research + research into other issues that only affect female physiology only accounts of 7% of all medical research. The other 93% is either focused on general or male-specific issues (and conducted mostly on men).
Is it just medical research? It just says research in general. I'm not making a claim either way, but agree it's worded very poorly.
Yes, I know what it means. That’s why the headline is bit misleading.
The headline is of course misleading, but not really for the reasons you pointed out. Nobody is going to read that headline and think it means 93% of gynecological research is conducted on men. Some people might read it and think it means 93% of medical research overall is conducted on men, though.