Prison Birth Project

Laila Krugman

Have you ever wondered why female-bodied people seem to be diagnosed with health issues later in life than their male-bodied counterparts? Have you ever thought about the different ways an illness or a vaccine may affect someone based on their sex? No? Is it the inherent disregard for female health in society? A lack of research on female anatomy? Perhaps it can be attributed to the tendency for medical trials to be blind to gender differences? The answer? All of the above.

Not only have white men dominated the corporate world, but, historically, they have been the majority of those used in toxicology and biomedical research. This was only meant to be remedied as recently as 1993 when the National Institutes of Health set a mandate which required the inclusion of women and minorities in any federally funded health research. Even now, however, it is clear that the struggle to involve female-bodied individuals in scientific and medical research has hardly begun. When women are included in studies, there is often a lack of documentation of separation of sex which causes an inability to “identify important differences that could benefit the health of all”, according to researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The exclusion of women from health studies was excused for many different reasons that, in reality, further demonstrated the need for female body studies. A large reason that women were excluded was due to the worry that their menstrual cycle would complicate the results of the study, causing a need for more trials which would, subsequently, cost more money. This excuse was justified through the assumption that any study done on male-bodied individuals would successfully translate to female-bodied ones. This, while widely upheld, could easily be uprooted by the mere reasons women were excluded from these studies in the first place. The concern of how one’s menstrual cycle could impact a clinical study is a prime example of how the female sex functions differently than the male sex, and must be researched as such. Simply eliminating the presence of a menstrual cycle in studies does not reduce their existence in society, and only creates a risk of unforeseen health problems for those that experience it.

While there has been steady progress on this front as more organizations and manufacturers are required to include female-bodied individuals in their studies, there have been current exclusions within the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Catherine Y. Spong, MD, the exclusion of pregnant and breastfeeding women from COVID-19 clinical trials is a “major missed opportunity” as results with men and nonpregnant women “may not be generalizable” which excludes this vital and at-risk category of people from modern studies in a worldwide pandemic.

The fight for the inclusion of all women in medical research is ongoing and requires efforts from medical researchers, scientists, manufacturers, large medicinal corporations, as well as public support for increased funding and research for women’s health.