Most scientific research is done on men. It's a big problem for women

BERLIN - Women make up half the world's population, yet they remain underrepresented not only in research and in top positions in politics and business, but also in studies used for scientific and medical standards, says Nigina Muntean of the UN Population Fund.

And that's a problem.

For decades, scientific and medical standards were based on the male body - "more precisely on the average white man," Muntean says. She heads the innovation department at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations' organization for sexual and reproductive health.

In Berlin, a center was founded last year under a UNFPA program with support from the Charité hospital and the Berlin Institute of Health, with the goal of promoting women's health.

"These metrics still form the basis for much of today's research, product development and even protective equipment," the physician with a doctorate and a specialization in obstetrics and gynaecology explained in an interview with dpa in Berlin.

Gender makes a big difference in many aspects of health care. As a surgeon, she says she often had to put two fingers through the surgical scissors, as they were too big for her hands.

"Surgical instruments were not designed for smaller women's hands - and that is still the case today."

The result? There is clear evidence that female surgeons suffer more often from shoulder, neck and joint complaints and therefore often require physiotherapy - "because instruments and operating environments are not ergonomically tailored to them," she says.

Gloves and other medical protective equipment are also often not available in the right size, she adds.

Safety in cars

Another issue is safety in vehicles. "Most cars still do not use female crash test dummies for safety tests," Muntean notes.

The first purpose-built average female dummy came onto the market in 2022, as it is costly to redesign entire car safety systems.

"But the cost is women's lives - women are 17% more likely to die in car accidents," she notes. According to experts at the German Insurance Association's research group UDV, dummies cover the range of different body sizes of men and women well for most crash scenarios.

While gender plays only a minor role in frontal and side impacts, they said it is different in rear impacts. There, women face about twice the risk of so-called whiplash.

"For this we believe there should also be a dummy with average female size for these specific test scenarios," said Kirstin Zeidler, UDV's director.

Inapt sports shoes and misdiagnosed heart conditions

There are examples in sport too, that have consequences for female athletes, Muntean says. Shoes are an example.

"Female athletes suffer anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries two to six times more often than men," she explains. "Above all because sports shoes and equipment are tailored to the anatomy and weight of men." While this concerns elite sport, it also applies to daily life.

Another well-known example is the heart attack.

"Women are often misdiagnosed - particularly in cardiac medicine," Muntean says. While the symptoms are very clear for men, the signs in women can present quite differently. Yet often, "their symptoms are dismissed as stress or anxiety," the doctor explains. "Many do not die due to a lack of treatment, but due to delayed or denied care."

In women, the typical severe chest pain is often less pronounced than in men. Health experts say women are more likely to report a feeling of tightness and pressure in the chest, sweating or back pain or nausea or unexplained fatigue. In addition, many first responders are often trained on male mannequins, Muntean notes. This can also be a problem, she says.

"Some hesitate to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on women because they are not sure where and how to apply pressure." These are delays, she says, "which can be fatal."

How are women represented in studies?

Before medicines come to market, they must first be tested in studies. Drugs that are to be approved for men and women must also be tested on both sexes, Rolf Hömke from the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Vfa) explains.

Starting with Phase II of a normally three-phase study, regulatory authorities require a ratio of subjects be as close as possible to the affected population.

This is not the case for the first phase, however, where he says there are no known ratio specifications for participating men and women. In the early phases of studies, women are still underrepresented in drug trials, Nigina Muntean says.

"As a result, the likelihood that women experience adverse drug reactions is up to 70% higher."

On top of this, "an astonishing 99% of longevity studies do not take menopause into account - which means that the physiology of half the population is essentially missing from aging research."

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This story was originally published March 18, 2026 at 1:28 AM.