8 Shocking Facts About Women in Medical Research That Will Make You Say, ‘Seriously?’

Here is a deeply unsettling thought: Much of what modern medicine knows about the human body was learned without adequately studying half of the population. And those decisions didn’t stay neatly tucked away in the laboratory.

They helped shape which symptoms doctors recognize, how medications are dosed, which treatments get studied (and funded) and ultimately, the care women receive (or don’t). Women are now included in far more research than they once were.

What Happened

But … here’s the catch: putting women in a study isn’t the same as studying women. Researchers still don’t always analyze whether the results differ by sex — even though our bodies, risks and responses to disease and treatments can.

• It took the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 to make inclusion of women a legal requirement for NIH-funded clinical research.

• The 1993 law helped get women into human clinical research.

• That did not change until 2016, when the NIH’s Sex as a Biological Variable policy, required researchers studying humans or vertebrate animals to explain how sex would factor into research — or justify studying.

Key Details

It got us curious about women in medical research. And some of the facts we uncovered made us stop and say, Wait, Seriously?

• A 2020 analysis of 740 cardiovascular trials completed between 2010 and 2017 included 862,652 adults.

• A WHAM analysis of NIH spending found that in 2019, just 12% — $280 million of the agency’s $2.4 billion Alzheimer’s research budget — went to projects focused specifically on women.

• And here’s the kicker: That 12% isn’t just a snapshot.

Why It Matters

Because apparently, we need to make sure that the medical industry actually studies us. That is the year the National Institutes of Health (NIH) required researchers to include women in medical studies.

• The latest data shows it remained unchained through 2025.

• When Flow Space examined the disparity in 2024, men had 26 FDA-approved sexual health drugs compared with only two for women.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• A congressionally mandated National Academies analysis found that just 8.8% of NIH grant spending from 2013 through 2023 focused on women’s health research.

• And that sliver got even smaller: It fell from 9.7% in 2013 to 7.9% in 2023 — even as the NIH’s overall grant funding grew.

• Continued reporting by Flow Space as more details emerge