Women have historically been underrepresented in medical research, both in the lack of female participants in clinical trials and in the underrepresentation of female primary investigators leading clinical trials. Read on to uncover the inequalities between female and male representation in medical research.
What inequalities exist?
First, there is a significant difference in the number of female participants in clinical trials when compared to the number of male participants. Researchers in a 2022 study for Contemporary Clinical Trials found that across 1,433 drugs and device clinical trials in the U.S. between 2016 and 2019, on average, only 41% of participants were female.
Additionally, even in conditions that primarily affect women, there is much less research done on the disease in the female body. In the same study from Contemporary Clinical Trials, it was found that women made up 42% of psychiatric clinical trials, even though 60% of people with psychiatric disorders are women.
Similarly, only 12% of Alzheimer’s disease research is allocated to projects centered around women, despite two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients being women.
Such inequities are also present in cardiovascular disease research. The most common cause of death of women in the United States is cardiovascular disease; however, only one-third of the members of clinical trials pertaining to that condition are female. Plus, the National Institutes of Health’s cardiac artery disease research only allots 4% of its entire budget to female-specific research. Here, it is clear that on top of a limited amount of research being done on cardiovascular disease in women, there is a general lack of funding for such investigations to even occur.
There is an even greater inequality in medical research when observing female-specific health conditions: the 2021 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology Maternal-Fetal Medicine included a study that found that only 2% of all U.S. clinical trials are dedicated to obstetrics, despite over 33% of women being affected by obstetrical complications globally.
What are the consequences of this underrepresentation?
Even when women are finally represented in clinical trials, they are often given the new drug during the first phase of their menstrual cycle to reduce any effects that could be due to fluctuating hormones—something that does not mimic real-world usage of the drug and could thus lead to adverse effects for women.
One study revealed the prevalence of these possible adverse effects. 76 out of 86 commonly used drugs were found to be absorbed and processed differently depending on one’s biological sex, yet the dosing guidelines did not account for this. As a result, women experience adverse reactions to drugs at two times the rate of men.
An example of the negative consequences of inadequate research on drugs within biological female bodies is the Ambien drug. The FDA approved this insomnia medication in 1992. Women metabolize the drug more slowly than men, meaning they need a lower dosage so they do not endure excessive drowsiness. However, this was overlooked because of the lack of female participants in clinical trials of the drug—there was not a significant number of participants with adverse effects to seriously affect dosing guidelines. Thus, it was not until 2013 that the FDA officially mandated that women take a lower dose. This was after more than 700 traffic accidents, potentially attributed to incorrect dosing of this drug, were reported to the FDA.
Such consequences from medication use are not the only effect of a lack of medical research on women. Although women are more likely to die from a heart attack than men, standard treatments were designed to aid the male body. This includes stents, for which it is “women are more likely than men to have adverse cardiovascular events after the placement of a stent”. Doctors are also trained to look for male symptoms of a heart attack, even though it is known that women exhibit differing signs of cardiac arrest.
Sources:
Colino, Stacey. “Women Are Still Under-Represented in Medical Research. Here’s Where the Gender Gap Is Most Pronounced.” TIME, 1 Nov. 2024, time.com/7171341/gender-gap-medical-research/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.
Gupta, Harsh, et al. “Clinical Trials Have a Gender Problem.” TIME, 16 Oct. 2025, time.com/7325584/clinical-trials-gender-gap/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
Lee, Carolee. “The gender gap in health research funding is hurting all of us.” Northwell Health, http://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/gender-gap-in-health-research. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.
McGregor, Alyson J. “Medical research has left women in the dark for years. Here’s how we change it.” Northwell Health, http://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/medical-research. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
Rojas, Yenny. “The Importance of Clinical Research in Advancing Healthcare.” Wooster Community Hospital, 30 Aug. 2024, http://www.woosterhospital.org/the-importance-of-clinical-research-in-advancing-healthcare/.
Rubin, Karen, and April Popescu. “Why Women’s Health is a $500M Problem Worth Solving.” Medium, 5 Apr. 2022, medium.com/@karenrubin/why-womens-health-is-a-500m-problem-worth-solving-d0f3696e1c6a. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
Singh, Kavita, and Renu Swarup. “Women are poorly represented in clinical trials. That’s problematic.” Springer Nature, 8 Mar. 2025, http://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-025-00036-y. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
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