Imagine you are a female athlete who’s researching the best way to optimize your performance on the field, or the best way to prevent or treat an injury. Unknowingly, the majority of papers and answers you sift through are not tested with research subjects that reflect your anatomy and your needs. This has been a persisting issue throughout time—women are constantly under prioritized in research, specifically sports research, and pushed out of an aggressive and masculine space. This has a devastating impact on representation and health while denying us accurate research and knowledge about our bodies.
The first question you must have is: is this really a problem? Well, according to Science News, in 30 recent studies, women made up just 3 percent of the participants. Considering that we make up half the population, there is definitely something wrong with that level of representation.
The second question you might have is: why does this issue persist? There are numerous reasons for this, but focusing on three main ones will hopefully help illustrate the point. The first is that the research environment pushes out female study participants. Dr. Sims, a researcher running a trial program in New Zealand on rehab for women with ACL injuries, wrote that “the language used in sport-science recruitment is often very masculine and aggressive, which plays havoc with women’s confidence in being a good participant.” Specifically, she mentions how one woman’s result came back differently from her fellow male participants causing the team to disregard them due to a belief that she had done the study wrong. Sims expands by writing that “By design of the study, I, as a woman, was going to be different.” These issues span beyond female sport’s research—the male experience has consistently been regarded as correct and accepted while the female experience is disregarded in the workplace, in policymaking, and now here in research as well.
A second reason is the lack of female researchers studying sports performance and related topics: less than 30 percent of the world’s researchers are female. At this point, it is clear that this issue goes back to generational issues with women’s representation in the workplace. Consistent sexism and gender bias has denied women of opportunities to lead relevant research. This also relates to the third reason for this issue—funding. Men’s research systematically gets more funding: over 30 percent more on average. And that’s not surprising at all. The overt sexism and bias they face in the workplace means they are less likely to get grants for their research which creates a vicious cycle of less researchers, less research, and ultimately less studies that get us answers about our bodies.
One key place of focus is menstrual cycles. Milliseconds can be the difference between first place and not making the podium in intense sports competitions. For this reason, small advantages can make big differences which is why good data concerning the effects of menstruation on athletic performance can be key to optimization. Unfortunately, since men don’t have them, research is very scant and we are just beginning to see developments in menstrual-cycle coaching and female focused optimization techniques.
At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering, what can we do about this? Firstly, it would be unfair to say this issue is untouched. For example, Stanford University launched Stanford FASTR: Female Athlete Science and Translational Research which focuses on closing the gender gap in sports science research through promoting women focused studies. Thus, It would be more correct to say this process is in infancy. So as organizations give birth, what can we as individuals do to raise a healthy baby?
I am not an expert on the topic, but as someone with a passion for it, I believe that awareness can go a long way. Before I began researching this issue, I didn’t know that these discrepancies existed, even with this being a personal area of interest. That leads me to believe that the average person is unaware that the majority of research they are surrounded by lacks female representation. If no one perceives an issue then nothing is going to change. Thus, it is essential to mobilize the community and awaken them to the problem, build the same kind of outrage at such inequities that I hope you feel reading this, and ask them to use their voice in numbers. We need people to continuously question the status quo and call for change to make a difference.
Along with bringing awareness about the need for change, we need to support people who are creating the change. For example, companies like Saysh and Ida sports have used research on the difference in female anatomy to create shoes specifically designed for the female foot. We need to support these companies to incentivize more investment and increased growth of this industry.
Finally, we need numbers knocking down the barriers that have historically shut women out of male dominated fields. A vicious cycle is created every time a woman feels unable to participate in the research community. Men will continue to ask questions about men, but if no one is there to ask questions about the female experiences then those experiences will never be researched. The opportunities we have today are numerous compared to those of women before us. Now more than ever it is essential that we have the confidence to recognize the value of our experience and our abilities and not allow anything or anyone to question our right to get answers about our body. While barriers and biases make this a challenge every day, viewing these as roadblocks has for too long reinforced the mindset that we need to settle. No—it’s time for change. As The Economist incisively puts it, “female sport-science is a promising field of research as the fiction that men are the baseline and women an anomaly—a rib, as it were, pulled from the chest of research on men—is put to rest.”
