statement<\/a> encouraging a consideration of sex and gender,\u201d Professor Graham says.<\/p>\n\u201cBut it\u2019s not a mandate. There\u2019s no requirement in funding applications to even show this \u2014 and that is where the real change needs to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are very few instances where single sex studies could be justified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Costly ignorance<\/p>\n
This has led to women being more likely than men to be misdiagnosed, experience adverse drug reactions and receive less effective treatment for common conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still using drugs and interventions that were made before the 1990s \u2014 and they\u2019ve never been tested on women,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
This bias is even seen in first aid, such as how CPR mannequins lack breasts, which she says affects how health professionals and first responders are trained to save women\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still think of the male as the default human,\u201d says Professor Graham.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to doing things like administering CPR, people feel less confident when treating a woman.\u201d\u2028<\/p>\n
Retrofitted for women<\/p>\n
The current model of evidence-based medicine is \u201cactually mostly evidence-based for men.\u201d<\/p>\n
The clitoris \u2014 which is an entire organ in itself \u2014 remained absent from anatomy until 1998, when Australian neurologist Professor Helen O\u2019Connell fully mapped it \u2014 in her spare time, unfunded.<\/p>\n
But the lack of female research in medicine extends further. Common conditions that affect all people, such as heart disease or depression, manifest differently in women, yet treatment guidelines don\u2019t reflect these differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd even then, women are more likely to die from reproductive cancers than men are from male-specific cancers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is largely due to later detection and less investment in early testing.\u201d<\/p>\n
When \u2018bikini medicine\u2019 is an afterthought<\/p>\n
Women\u2019s health concerns are still often dismissed or overlooked, with even basic lab research relying on male cells.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a power dynamic in medical relationships still. It\u2019s a real issue,\u201d Professor Graham says.<\/p>\n
Today, Professor Graham campaigns for better recognition of gender in medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an example, we still don\u2019t know why some antidepressants work for hot flushes in menopause,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s because we don\u2019t know why \u2014 or how \u2014 women\u2019s bodies regulate temperature during menopause.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedical students aren\u2019t aware that the evidence they\u2019re learning is biased.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re taught to treat everyone as if sex and gender don\u2019t matter \u2014 unless it\u2019s reproductive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Invisible populations<\/p>\n
Professor Graham says one of the most urgent issues to address under the assessment is how little is known about health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ communities.<\/p>\n
The clinical data for LGBTQIA+ communities is rarely collected, or analysed, in ways that differentiate between sex, gender and sexual orientation.<\/p>\n
And studies that do include non-binary or LGBTQIA+ people are often excluded from published results, making it difficult to develop effective and inclusive treatment guidelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t improve care for communities we\u2019re not even counting,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you take sex and gender into account, your research is just better. It\u2019s more accurate, more reproducible, more useful.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about fairness \u2013 it\u2019s about good quality science and good quality healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nance Haxton was a journalist at the ABC for nearly 20 years. She\u2019s also worked as an Advocate at the Disability Royal Commission helping people with disabilities tell their stories\u00a0and as a senior reporter for the National Indigenous Radio Service.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In that time she\u2019s won a\u00a0range of Australian and international honours, including two Walkley Awards, and three New York Festivals Radio Awards trophies.<\/p>\n
Now freelancing as The Wandering Journo, Nance is independently producing podcasts including her personal audio slice of Australia \u201cStreets of Your Town\u201d.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to the free\u00a0InSight+\u00a0weekly newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. It is available to all readers, not just registered medical practitioners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A legacy of exclusion means Australia\u2019s medical system is fundamentally skewed, as it was built for and tested…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-407304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}