This underrepresentation of women has created gender-specific gaps in medical and disease knowledge, putting their health at risk, and also perpetuaing disparities in our understanding of drug effects and real world treatment outcomes.

The gender gap and drug development

The gender gap also extends to drug development, where a lack of representation in early-phase clinical trials undermines the accuracy and effectiveness of pharmaceutical interventions. When the clinical evaluation of drugs fails to consider gender differences, it impacts dosing, safety, and efficacy. Sex-specific data is critical for understanding how drugs interact with the male and female body differently, yet this information is often neglected in drug development and reporting.

In the context of phase III clinical trials for new cancer treatments, it is optimal for the study population to closely resemble the demographic that will eventually use these treatments, so when trial populations deviate from the actual disease incidence in society, the reproducibility and generalizability of results become limited. For example, c linical trial data generated in men does not necessarily extrapolate to women , who exhibit a 1.5 to 1.7 times greater risk of experiencing adverse reactions to drugs. They also face higher hospitalization rates due to these reactions, even when accounting for age-related differences.