Women Not ‘Excluded’ or ‘Underrepresented’ in Medical Research: Report

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Robert Thompson: 301-801-0608

Women Not ‘Excluded’ or ‘Underrepresented’ in Medical Research: Report

WASHINGTON / April 30, 2025 – A new report reveals that women were not “underrepresented” or “excluded” from medical research in previous years. The document refutes the claim that is used the justify the existence of seven offices of women’s health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1).

The report, authored by James Nuzzo, PhD, concludes that over the past 28 years, women represented 58% of all participants in NIH-funded research (2).

The document also highlights an Inclusion Statistics Report that analyzes NIH-funded research on a disease-specific basis (3). This Inclusion Report again demonstrates that for a majority of conditions, the participants are more likely to be female than male. For example, NIH studies on Coronaviruses are composed of 54% females and 43% males.

A 2001 GAO report revealed, “GAO found that women were a majority of the clinical trial participants in the new drug applications (NDA) it examined, and that every NDA included enough women in the pivotal studies to be able to statistically demonstrate that the drug is effective in women.” (4) A previous peer-reviewed article that examined sex-specific research participation as early as 1966 affirmed the same conclusion (5).

The conclusive Nuzzo review also links to a previous analysis that reveals that each year, 14% of the NIH research budget is allocated to women’s health, while only 6% goes for men’s health (6). The remainder of NIH research funding goes for research that is not sex-specific. Men have an average lifespan that is 5.4 years shorter than women’s (7), a statistic that underscores the irony of the chronic underfunding of men’s health research.

The analysis also lists media channels that have repeated the shibboleth that women were shortchanged by medical research. These media outlets include the Washington Post, Forbes Magazine, Inside Higher Ed, and Time magazine.

Nuzzo concludes, “The broad claim that women have been historically ‘understudied’ or ‘underrepresented’ in medical research is false….With this array of raw source documents now collated in one place, there is no excuse for academics, professional societies, journalists, and politicians to continue to propagate the myth that women have been ‘understudied’ or ‘underrepresented’ in medical research.”

The absence of a single office of men’s health is an affront to fairness and common sense. SAVE invites lawmakers to reach out to DHHS Secretary Kennedy and urge him to assure that men’s health receives equal priority as women’s health.

SAVE – Stop Abusive and Violent Environments – is a 501(c)3 organization working to assure due process, fairness, and equal opportunities for men.

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