Research into women’s health has for decades been underfunded and still does not correspond to the burden of disease that women face, data show.

Both female animals and women have been excluded from clinical trials. This was partly due to concerns about the impact women’s hormonal cycles may have on study results. It is also the result of a guideline the FDA issued in the late 1970s, banning most women of “childbearing potential” from taking part in clinical studies after certain drugs were found to have caused serious birth defects. 

Since then efforts have been taken to address the research gap. The 1977 guideline was reversed in 1993 and by 2014 around 50% of all participants in clinical trials funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) were women.  

But there still remains a disconnect between the proportions of women in clinical trials and the prevalence or burden of disease.

An analysis conducted by independent researcher Arthur Mirin based on data from the NIH and covered in a Nature article⁵ showed that disorders that disproportionately affect women, such as migraines, headaches, endometriosis, and anxiety disorders, attract less funding in proportion to the burden they exert on the US population. It also applies to oncology, immunology, and neurology.

“Unfortunately [funding for women’s health] is really undervalued, understudied,” Neuroscientist Liisa Galea at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada was quoted as saying in the Nature article.

When it comes to oncology, an analysis of cancer funding based on data from the US National Cancer Institute from 2007-2017 showed gynecological cancers had less financial backing than other cancers when accounting for how deadly they are, according to the Nature article⁵. Ovarian cancer, for example, is the fifth most deadly cancer, but twelfth in terms of its funding-to-lethality ratio, out of a list of 19 cancers. It’s a similar picture for cervical cancer, and for many gynecological cancers, the ratio of funding to mortality even fell during the 11-year study period.