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In 1967, two women illegally ran the Boston Marathon. At the time, women were barred from participating in marathons. In fact, it wasn’t until 1960 that women were even allowed to compete in the Olympic 800m (½-mile) event—from which women had been banned since 1928 due to false reports that they collapsed after competing.
The reasoning? It was widely believed that running could harm a woman’s health. Scientists and doctors, all male of course, believed that running could cause infertility in a woman. Others believed that women running would actually result in a prolapsed uterus, which honestly makes me question their medical degrees. Most simply believed that women’s bodies were too fragile for the endurance required of running a marathon.
All ridiculous assumptions that were perpetuated by a total and complete lack of scientific research on women.
Thankfully, pioneers like Bobbi Gibb and Kathrine Switzer, the two women who ran the 1967 Boston marathon, proved otherwise, paving the way for women’s participation in sports. However, in the end, it was scientific studies on women’s bodies that ultimately solidified the inclusion of women in endurance sports and beyond.
The Importance of Women’s Health Research
Scientific studies that focus on women’s health are essential and go way beyond proving that women will not drop their uterus straight out of their bodies if they run anything longer than a city block.
Despite its importance, women’s health research was neglected for many decades.
For a brief period, women were included in health studies—though still far less than men. Then came the thalidomide tragedy.
Thalidomide, a drug prescribed for morning sickness in the late 1950s and early 1960s, caused devastating birth defects and miscarriages in Europe and Australia. The U.S. largely avoided the crisis thanks to a female pharmacologist and medical officer at the FDA based, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, who refused to approve it citing a lack of rigorous scientific research.
However, the aftermath led to disastrous consequences for women’s health research. In response, the FDA established guidelines excluding “premenopausal women” from clinical trials in Phase 1 and 2 for clinical research. The result? For decades, women of childbearing age were categorically excluded from clinical research due to fear of another large-scale catastrophe.
It wasn’t until 1993, when Congress passed the NIH Revitalization Act, that scientists were officially required to include women and minorities in their studies, as well as requiring that Phase III clinical trials be analyzed for sex differences.
Even today, women’s health research remains underfunded and underrepresented. But that was changing, until very recently.
The Dangers of Treating Women as “Smaller Men” in Medicine
Historically, male bodies have been considered the “default” in scientific research which meant that men’s bodies were studied in scientific research while women’s bodies were not. From a scientific standpoint, male bodies were then and are still simply considered “normal” while women’s bodies are considered “atypical.”
Rather than studying the differences in female physiology, women were often treated as smaller versions of men—a dangerous assumption with life-threatening consequences.
A 2020 study showed that women are twice as likely as men to experience adverse reactions to medications largely because drug dosages were based on clinical trials conducted exclusively on men. This “drug dose gender gap” exists for 86 medications approved by the FDA including antidepressants, cardiovascular and anti-seizure drugs, pain relievers, and several others.
This is one example of many. Women’s bodies are not just smaller male bodies. They function differently—yet research has consistently failed to account for these differences.
Including women in research studies is absolutely critical for the health and safety of women, as well as for the increased understanding of physical issues that are more specific to a female body.
You don’t have to think very hard about why health events like menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, and menopause were not historically studied and in fact continue to be understudied and underfunded. Men don’t experience any of these.
Take menstruation, as an example. There was little understanding of the hormonal menstrual cycle until the mid- 20th century. Before that, people did understand that menstruation had to do with fertility, but they also believed that menstrual blood was unclean and in some cases, a reflection on a woman’s morality.
And while our understanding of menstruation has come a long way from the days of believing that a menstruating woman could kill plants just by touching them (seriously, that was a thing people believed), there’s still a lot we don’t know because we failed to study it for so long.
The New Threat to Women’s Health Research: Restricted Words
Despite the long-overdue inclusion of women in clinical trials, research on women’s health is once again in jeopardy now in 2025.
In an effort to dismantle what he calls “woke” ideology, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” Soon after, the National Science Foundation created a list of words that would be flagged for possible rejection if they appear in a research proposal. The list was shared by Dr. Darby Saxbe, a professor at the University of Southern California.
The list of words includes “female,” “ethnicity,” “diversity,” “bias,” “historically,” “disabilities,” “Black and Latinx”, and “woman,” among others.
While using these terms doesn’t automatically disqualify a research proposal, many scientists have noted that possible rejection is enough to have them think twice about submitting work using these terms—discouraging researchers from even submitting studies that address women’s health.
But let’s be clear: this policy doesn’t just limit the way scientists talk about women’s health—it limits the kind of research that can be done. So while the Trump Administration is not outright saying, “we will no longer study women’s health,” they are limiting how women’s health can be studied.
Think about it: how can you conduct research about cervical cancer without using the words “female” or “woman?”
And if you want to try and figure out why a particular health issue disproportionately impacts black or indigenous women, you’re doubly screwed. How can researchers explore racial disparities in maternal health if Black and Latinx are flagged for scrutiny?
The Importance of Acknowledging Bias
Bias is inherent to scientific studies. Recognizing and addressing bias is essential to designing well-structured research. The is why flagging the word “bias” is particularly bonkers.
Part of the point of science is to continue to learn how the world works through a methodical approach of study, exploration, experimentation, and analysis. Bias is a huge part of this.
If researchers can’t acknowledge bias, how can they correct it? How can science evolve if researchers aren’t allowed to question existing assumptions?
In this post on Instagram, Dr. Arghavan Salles explains how ridiculous it is to remove the idea of bias from a research grant proposal, mostly because recognizing bias is fundamental to ensure that a study is well designed. “People talk about statistical bias all the time and people talk about bias in study design. So we’re no longer allowed to talk about that and what makes a study optimally designed and what the best statistical approaches are?”
Further, Dr. Salles talks about how restricting words like “sex” or “female” has an impact far beyond just the intention to shut down what might be labeled as “woke” ideology in science. “How do we even study animals if we can’t talk about the sex of the animals we study,” she asks. “Or are we just not supposed to include female animals or female people in studies anymore?”
Scientists are understandably worried. When you limit the words you can use when you are researching a topic, you limit the type of research that can be done.
And, of course, the fact that you might have to limit who is allowed to be studied is particularly disturbing. An idea that would literally set women’s health research back by more than 50 years.
A Real-World Example: The Flawed Science of BMI
When we presume male bodies are the norm and scientists only study men or only study health conditions that impact male bodies, science can only advance so far. It can also lead to inaccurate understanding of certain conditions.
Let’s look at BMI, as an example. The Body Mass Index (BMI) was created in 1832 by Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian statistician—not a medical doctor. It was initially called the Quetelet Index and was intended to find the “average man” based on their weight divided by their height, squared. Note that Quetelet was interested in discovering the “average man.” Not the average woman. It should also be super clear that he was likely only interested in studying white men, as well.
In 1972, Ancel Keys (also not a medical doctor) did his own study again – only including men in his study – which resulted in renaming of the Quetelet Index as the Body Mass Index. It also began the medical use of the BMI to assess “health,” despite the fact that Keys did not seem to intend for BMI to be used in that way.
Over time, and further influenced by capitalism and insurance policies, it transformed into the BMI we know and hate today.
Its fatal flaws are that the BMI does not distinguish between weight from muscle tissue and body weight from fat tissues or provide data on any actual health metrics. It’s a very basic mathematical equation designed for statistical analysis of white men. Now it’s being used to determine whether people of all races and gender identities are “obese” which can dramatically impact a person’s health insurance, not to mention how they are treated by doctors.
In an article that analyzes the impacts of the BMI on health policy, the authors note, “The current BMI scale is likely an inaccurate representation of women’s health status and disease risks, as various factors contribute to substantial differences in CVD risk and mortality between men and women. There is considerable evidence for sex differences in cardiac autonomic modulation, sex hormones, cytokines, and lipid and glucose metabolism.”
The BMI is an absolutely inaccurate tool for measuring health broadly and it was never designed to be such … and yet, it’s still widely used and misapplied.
This is exactly why diversity in research matters. If you only study one group, you get a biased, incomplete understanding of health.
The Profit-Driven Attack on Public Health Research
Beyond government restrictions, there’s another major threat to scientific research: corporate influence.
At the heart of the rampant spread of flawed science is capitalism and profit. The misclassification of people based on BMI in terms of “health” status aside, there implications are vast—such as the vice president of an insurance company who noticed that an increasing number of policyholders who were making insurance claims were folks with higher weights. For him, having a tool to measure body weight, categorize someone as “good” or “bad,” and then use that to able to charge more to those deemed “bad” was good for the insurance business.
As Dr. Jessica Knurick points out, when financial gain becomes a part of the equation, research sponsored by for-profit companies can impact the type of science that is even studied.
“This is not about fixing science. This is about dismantling public research so they can privatize it. They’ll say it makes things more efficient or reduces waste. But it also increases inequality and prioritizes profit over public well being, increases corporate influence over what gets researched and what doesn’t, and shifts priorities from public well being to profit driven topics.”
She continues, explaining why for-profit science is so destructive:
“Here’s the problem: when science is dictated by profit, it stops serving the public good. Diseases that aren’t profitable, get ignored. Maternal health, rare disease, environmental risks – no money in those, no research. Medical breakthroughs become even more exclusive and the best treatments will go to those who can afford them, not those who need them. And misinformation and pseudoscience gets legitimized.”
Why This Matters for the Future of Women’s Health
Science advances when we study the full range of human experience—not just white, male bodies.
If scientists are applying for research grants that cover topics that are related to women’s health, like postpartum depression, they are also likely less profitable and will be ignored in a privatized scientific landscape.
Something like erectile dysfunction will continue to be funded because limp dicks are important to men and as a result, very profitable, while postpartum women are unable to access the care they need and continue to be thoroughly dismissed by the medical establishment.
When we stop presuming that white, male bodies are the norm, scientific research improves. This is evident in the advances in science over the past 30 years since women were once again allowed in clinical trials, but also with increased study of the differences between women and men’s physiology and an increased focus on women’s health, specifically.
An excellent example of this is the research that revealed symptoms for heart attacks present differently in women than they do in men.
Science that excludes the word “woman” is limited science. If you can’t be specific about certain topics because particular words are off limits, you’re not able to design studies that lead to scientific breakthroughs that can improve the quality of life for so many people—which, history has shown, will ultimately lead to negative health outcomes for women.
Additionally, black women, hispanic women, asian women, and indigenous women are studied significantly less than white women. When words like “woman” or “diversity” or “bipoc” are excluded from scientific research, we’ll end up with more inadequate BMI-type science that serves the wealthy and harms those who are already marginalized.
Perhaps these are the outcomes this administration wants.
By restricting the words scientists can use, we risk reverting back to outdated, harmful medical practices—like the days when doctors believed a woman couldn’t run far without losing her uterus.
Health is not one-size-fits-all. Science needs diversity to move us forward. And that starts with allowing researchers to ask the right questions. —Naomi
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Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10693914/
https://www.aamc.org/news/why-we-know-so-little-about-women-s-health
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200812161318.htm
