The researcher fighting to embed analysis of sex and gender into science
Recalled drugs, unsafe products and even environmental chaos are just some of the consequences of research that doesn’t consider sex and gender, says Londa Schiebinger. That’s why Schiebinger, who studies gender and science at Stanford University in California, is helping funders convince researchers to analyse the effect of these factors in their studies.
A welcome move to address a real scientific and clinical problem. Work that is blind to different gender experience can, at best generate results of limited value, or at worst a source of real harm. We believe all funding bodies should seriously consider this.
The move strengthens a policy the commission began to implement in 2013. By 2020, it asked research applicants in about one-third of fields to account for sex (biological characteristics commonly used to classify people as male, female or intersex) and gender (socially constructed roles, norms and identities, not necessarily binary or aligned with a person’s sex) in their research. It was one of the first funders outside of health research to do so. But fewer researchers than expected did the analyses.