Equity & difference: Deconstructing gender in health research for women

Despite policy changes and advocacy efforts to promote the inclusion of women as participants in research and to advance a global agenda of women’s sexual reproductive health over the past two decades, women remain significantly underrepresented in biomedical research and its translational outputs beyond reproductive health.

In this empirical ethics project, we will investigate the reasons why structural barriers to women’s health improvements persist within the practices of research itself—in how research is designed, conducted, and translated.

More deeply, we will interrogate the role that implicit and explicit moral attitudes, beliefs and arguments play in making the case for a focus on women’s and girl’s health needs, and in the reactions to these priority-setting appeals in academic, policy, and social media domains.

Taken together this work aims to make a significant contribution to evidence-based advocacy within biomedical research practice, transforming how researchers think and do research with and for women and girls.