WOMEN are under-represented in meaningful sports and exercise science research, claims British international athlete Georgie Bruinvels in an editorial that appears in the latest British Journal of Sports Medicine. It is happening, she says, despite the participation gap narrowing between men and women.
Georgie Bruinvels: groundbreaking research into women’s sports performance
MARK SHEARMAN
A big reason for the potentially risky disparity is a women’s monthly period, suggests Bruinvels, a physiology researcher in the division of surgery and interventional science at University College London. “The complexities of the menstrual cycle are considered major barriers to the inclusion of women in clinical trials,” Bruinvels wrote, adding that researchers tended to avoid selecting female subjects because they are “more physiologically variable than men.”