The Guardian view on bias in medical research: disregard for women’s health belongs in the past | Editorial

It is shocking that while illnesses specific to men are studied, those affecting women are ignored

Six years after Caroline Criado Perez's bestselling book Invisible Women drew a mass readership's attention to the long history of sexist bias in medical research, it is shocking that women and their illnesses are still underrepresented in clinical trials. Analysis by the Guardian of data gathered for a new study showed that from 2019 to 2023, 282 trials involving only male subjects were submitted for regulatory approval in the UK - compared with 169 focused on women.

Health inequality is a complex and multifaceted problem. There are massive socioeconomic differencesin life expectancy and infant mortality, aswell as race inequalities - for example, in maternity and mental illnesses. These and other disparities, alongwith those relating to disability, can also be mapped geographically.

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