Exploring the gender bias in healthcare
Aili Forster / The Samohi
In a society so brazenly proud and insistent of its sensitivity to women’s needs, there is a significant area in which we remain unenlightened: medicinal research. Despite major strides in recent years, the advancement of women’s health remains at a disadvantage, hindered by years of exclusion and discrimination in an industry so long dominated by the male perspective. To this day, women continue to suffer from the shortcomings of the pharmaceutical industry, an industry that they are forced to support if they wish to live.
Consider the life of the middle-aged American woman. Throughout the pregnancies of her children, she was readily supplied with a number of pregnancy books and insurance-covered ultrasounds, both of which were of interest to her husband. However, when her children were off to college and menopause struck, the woman had absolutely no resources to guide her, leaving her utterly perplexed by the sudden influx of her emerging hormones. The startling lack of research in the realm of post-reproductive health—a University College London study revealed that over 60 percent of women were forced to turn to sources other than health professionals while experiencing menopause—can only be attributed to society’s reluctance to prioritize women’s health.
The National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) has long advocated for the increased participation of women in medical studies, which can be attributed to an extensive history of gender bias in medical trials. The perpetual exclusion of women in the development of countless prominent pharmaceuticals—many of which are still on shelves today—continues to be overlooked in the medical research community. In particular, women remain drastically underrepresented in the realm of cardiovascular health, especially relative to the number of heart defects in the female population. Over a period of 30 years, a series of randomized clinical trials of drug therapy for heart attacks sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute were revealed to have studied less than 20 percent female participants.
Additionally, it is far too often in history that a study conducted specifically for women’s health neglects to consider the sex of their clinical subject. For instance: Rockefeller University’s 1986 study dedicated to the effects of obesity on women’s breast and uterine cancer—affectionately nicknamed “the height of ludicrousness” in The Canadian Medical Association Journal—consisted of entirely male subjects. Thalidomide, a highly popular drug widely used in the 1960s among pregnant women for the treatment of nausea, was primarily tested on rodents and human male subjects, neither of which were pregnant. The result was a nationwide tragedy in which thousands of babies were born with considerable birth defects and missing limbs.
Furthermore, there has always been significant overlap between women’s pharmaceuticals and patriarchal expectations. A hotspot of religious discussion, the subject of contraceptives has divided America for centuries. It was in 1873 that the Comstock Act was passed, making the dissemination of birth control—and subsequently, its use—a federal offense. While scientists labored to invent a pill that would later be known as Viagra, women were legally barred against the exploration of their sexuality, confined to the life of motherhood that was expected of them. It was exactly a century later that the Supreme Court ruled the use of contraceptives by unmarried people legal under federal law in the 1972 court case Eisenstadt v. Baird.
Today, this pattern of historical gender disparity has yielded persistent consequences. Although groups such as the American Medical Women’s Association continue to preach women’s medical rights, the tenacious gender imbalance in the pharmaceutical world limits their advocacy to a smaller platform. A 2019 Catalyst study revealed the significance of the power gap in the pharmaceutical industry, with only 20 percent of women holding executive positions.
Nonetheless, numerous organizations continue to advocate for the increased inclusivity of women in leadership roles, clinical trials, polling and medical journalism, finally beginning to bridge a gap that has been cultivated for centuries.