Females Gain Ground as Biomedical Research Subjects

A study finds improvement in the proportion of scientific projects that include both sexes, but analyzing results by sex is not routine.

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In 2011, Annaliese Beery and Irving Zucker of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed biomedical literature and reported that studies using only male animals were far more common than studies of only females in eight of 10 disciplines they included, and few studies used both sexes. Several years later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in an attempt to rectify this imbalance, rolled out a policy change requiring funded projects to consider sex as a biological variable.

A study published in eLife yesterday (June 8) examines whether that change in NIH policy, implemented in 2016, has been effective. The authors’ survey of papers published in 34 biology journals in 2019 finds improvement in female representation since the previous study, which examined papers published in 2009. Overall, the proportion rose from 28 percent to 49 percent of studies, and the authors report increases ...

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Meet the Author

  • Shawna Williams

    Shawna was an editor at The Scientist from 2017 through 2022. She holds a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Colorado College and a graduate certificate and science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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