UBC study finds research in exercise physiology still fails women

A new UBC study finds that there are fewer women, both as participants and researchers, in exercise physiology than in other health sciences.

A UBC research team has revealed substantial, ongoing inequities in how sex and gender are represented in exercise physiology--both in who is studied and who is conducting that research.

The analysis shows that exercise physiology continues to focus mainly on male bodies and voices, despite long-standing calls for greater equity. It also shows that these patterns are more pronounced in exercise physiology than in most other areas of health research.

Dr. Meaghan MacNutt, an assistant professor of teaching in UBC Okanagan's School of Health and Exercise Sciences, is lead author on the review, which was published recently in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. She and colleagues from UBC's Faculty of Medicine examined more than 600 recent research articles published in six leading exercise physiology journals.

They found that nearly half of the studies included only male participants, while fewer than one in ten focused exclusively on females. Women were also significantly underrepresented as researchers, making up only 27 per cent of total authors and 16 per cent of those in senior roles.

"There are far fewer women in exercise physiology than in other biomedical or health sciences," says Dr. MacNutt. "Our numbers are closer to what we see in disciplines with very well-known gender gaps, like physics or computer science."

The research team says these gaps are more than just an issue of fairness--they also undermine the science by limiting whose bodies we understand and whose ideas shape that understanding.

"When findings based primarily on males are generalized to females, important sex-based differences in physiology, diagnosis and treatment can be overlooked. In exercise science, this contributes to an incomplete understanding of how women respond to physical activity--affecting everything from disease prevention to injury rehabilitation and athletic performance."

The study also assessed how well researchers followed the Sex and Gender Equity in Research Guidelines, an international framework designed to improve equity and accuracy in research and reporting practices. Most exercise physiology articles adhered to fewer than one-third of the guidelines, and more than half used inaccurate or unclear language when referring to sex and gender.

Dr. MacNutt points out that many articles contained clues about how these inequities are produced and sustained, including biased language, unexamined assumptions and weak or absent justifications for excluding female participants. These patterns suggest that exercise researchers still see men as the standard representation for human physiology. The study also found that this bias is just as common in women authors as men.

"Women researchers aren't perfect," states Dr. MacNutt. "We all have work to do. But evidence indicates that women researchers are helping to move the discipline forward in important ways--by including more female participants in their studies, collaborating more often with other women and communicating more clearly about sex and gender."

She notes the paper found no evidence that an increase in the number of women in exercise physiology is on the horizon.

Dr. MacNutt stresses the goal of this study is to raise awareness and encourage people to think about ways to improve the situation. She notes that some exercise physiologists--including researchers at UBC--are already working hard to address sex and gender gaps in the literature. However, there is still a long way to go.

"We hope this paper is a wake-up call--not just for exercise physiology researchers, but also for those in leadership positions at academic institutions, funding agencies and scientific journals. Shifts in individual researcher behaviour are essential, but they aren't likely to happen without support and action at all levels."

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