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Fulltext No pandemic preparedness and research without gender equality

Clark J, George A, Khosla R

BMJ, 2023 Jun 07;381:1213.
PMID: 37286212 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.p1213
Matched MeSH terms: Sexism*
Fulltext COVID-19: the turning point for gender equality

Fisseha S, Sen G, Ghebreyesus TA, Byanyima W, Diniz D, Fore HH, et al.

Lancet, 2021 Aug 07;398(10299):471-474.
PMID: 34280381 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01651-2
Matched MeSH terms: Sexism
Fulltext Gender bias in clinical case reports: A cross-sectional study of the "big five" medical journals

Allotey P, Allotey-Reidpath C, Reidpath DD

PLoS One, 2017;12(5):e0177386.
PMID: 28493948 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177386

BACKGROUND: Gender bias in medical journals can affect the science and the benefit to patients. It has never been investigated in clinical case reports. The oversight is important because of the role clinical case reports play in hypothesis generation and medical education. We investigated contemporary gender bias in case reports for the highest ranked journals in general and internal medicine.
METHODS: PubMed case reports data from 2011 to 2016 were extracted for the Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. The gender of the patients were identified and a text analysis of the Medical Subject Headings conducted.
RESULTS: A total of 2,742 case reports were downloaded and 2,582 (95.6%) reports contributed to the final analysis. A pooled analysis showed a statistically significant gender bias against female case reports (0.45; 95%CI: 0.43-0.47). The Annals of Internal Medicine was the only journal with a point estimate (non significant) in the direction of a bias against male patients. The text analysis identified no substantive difference in the focus of the case reports and no obvious explanation for the bias.
CONCLUSION: Gender bias, previously identified in clinical research and in clinical authorship, extends into the patients presented in clinical case reports. Whether it is driven by authors or editors is not clear, but it likely contributes to and supports an overall male bias of clinical medicine.

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism*
Fulltext Resolving sex and gender bias in COVID-19 vaccines R&D and beyond

Vijayasingham L, Heidari S, Munro J, Omer S, MacDonald N

Hum Vaccin Immunother, 2022 Dec 31;18(1):2035142.
PMID: 35143380 DOI: 10.1080/21645515.2022.2035142

The influence of sex and gender in immune response and vaccine outcomes is established in many disease areas, including in COVID-19. Yet, there are notable gaps in the consideration of sex and gender in the analysis and reporting of COVID-19 vaccines clinical trial data. The push for stronger sex and gender integration in vaccines science should be championed by all researchers and stakeholders across the R&D and access ecosystem - not just gender experts. This requires joint action on the tactical framing of customized value propositions (based on stakeholder motivations), the stronger enforcement of existing regulation, tools, and commitments, and aligning the overall agenda to parallel calls on intersectionality, equity diversity and inclusion.

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism
Fulltext Making pharmaceutical research and regulation work for women

Ravindran TS, Teerawattananon Y, Tannenbaum C, Vijayasingham L

BMJ, 2020 10 27;371:m3808.
PMID: 33109511 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.m3808
Matched MeSH terms: Sexism*
The harm hypothesis: How perceived harm to women shapes reactions to research on sex differences

Stewart-Williams S, Leong CXR, Seto SA, Thomas AG, Wong XL

Int J Psychol, 2024 Jun;59(3):495-504.
PMID: 38168745 DOI: 10.1002/ijop.13101

Past research suggests that reactions to research on sex differences are often less positive when the findings put men in a better light than women, especially when the lead researcher is a man. The factors underlying this effect, however, are not yet fully understood. The present study aimed to provide the first experimental test of the hypothesis that the key variable is perceived harm to women. Participants (214 men and 219 women) evaluated a bogus popular-science article reporting fictional research finding either a female- or a male-favouring sex difference in intelligence, attributed to either a female or a male lead researcher. To examine the effects of perceived harm, the introduction to the task highlighted either the potential benefits or potential drawbacks of sex-differences research in general. Consistent with past research, participants reacted less positively to the male-favouring difference, especially for male-led research. Consistent with the harm hypothesis, the effect was stronger after highlighting the potential drawbacks of sex-differences research than after highlighting the potential benefits. Our findings suggest that perceptions of harm to women underpin the aversion to male-favouring findings.

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism/psychology
Infanticide and illegal infant abandonment in Malaysia

Razali S, Kirkman M, Ahmad SH, Fisher J

Child Abuse Negl, 2014 Oct;38(10):1715-24.
PMID: 25048164 DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.06.008

Infant abandonment and infanticide are poorly understood in Malaysia. The information available in the public arena comes predominantly from anecdotal sources. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence and characteristics of infanticide and illegal infant abandonment in Malaysia and to estimate annual rates for the most recent decade. Summaries of data about infanticide and illegal infant abandonment were gathered from police records; the annual number of live births was ascertained from the national registry. The estimated inferred infanticide rates for Malaysia were compared with the infanticide rates among countries of very high, high, medium, and low rankings on the Human Development, Gender Inequality, and Gini indices. From 1999 to 2011, 1,069 cases of illegal infant abandonment were recorded and 1,147 people were arrested as suspected perpetrators. The estimated inferred infanticide rate fluctuated between 4.82 and 9.11 per 100,000 live births, a moderate rate relative to the infanticide rates of other countries. There are substantial missing data, with details undocumented for about 78-87% of cases and suspected perpetrators. Of the documented cases, it appeared that more boys than girls were victims and that suspected perpetrators were predominantly Malays who were women, usually mothers of the victim; the possibility of arrest bias must be acknowledged. Economic and social inequality, particularly gender inequality, might contribute to the phenomena of infanticide and abandonment. Strategies to reduce rates of infanticide and illegal infant abandonment in Malaysia will require strengthening of the surveillance system and attention to the gender-based inequalities that underpin human development.

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism/legislation & jurisprudence; Sexism/statistics & numerical data
Fulltext Face masks affect emotion categorisation, age estimation, recognition, and gender classification from faces

Wong HK, Estudillo AJ

Cogn Res Princ Implic, 2022 10 08;7(1):91.
PMID: 36209185 DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00438-x

Although putting on a mask over our nose and mouth is a simple but powerful way to protect ourselves and others during a pandemic, face masks may interfere with how we perceive and recognize one another, and hence, may have far-reaching impacts on communication and social interactions. To date, it remains relatively unknown the extent to which wearing a face mask that conceals the bottom part of the face affects the extraction of different facial information. To address this question, we compared young adults' performance between masked and unmasked faces in four different tasks: (1) emotion recognition task, (2) famous face recognition and naming test, (3) age estimation task, and (4) gender classification task. Results revealed that the presence of face mask has a negative impact on famous face recognition and emotion recognition, but to a smaller extent on age estimation and gender classification tasks. More interestingly, we observed a female advantage in the famous face recognition and emotion recognition tasks and a female own-gender bias in gender categorisation and age estimation tasks. Overall, these findings allude to the lack of malleability of the adulthood face recognition and perceptual systems.

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism
Fulltext Gender bias in training of medical students in obstetrics and gynaecology: a myth or reality?

Mohd Zahid AZ, Ismail Z, Abdullah B, Daud S

Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol, 2015 Mar;186:17-21.
PMID: 25614093 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2014.12.018

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the experience of medical students during a clinical attachment in obstetrics and gynaecology (O&G).
STUDY DESIGN: A questionnaire was distributed to medical students who completed their O&G posting between August 2012 and August 2013. The first part included basic demographic details (age, gender, and ethnicity) and frequency of actual clinical experience; the second part explored students' perception of their training and their relationship with other staff, in particular feeling of discrimination by specified groups of medical personnel. The responses were recorded using a Likert scale and were recategorised during analysis.
RESULTS: A total of 370 questionnaires were distributed, and 262 completed questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 71%. Female students had a significantly higher median (IqR) number of vaginal examinations performed 0.25(0.69) (p=0.002) compared to male students. Male students experienced a higher proportion of patient rejections during medical consultation, 87% vs. 32% of female students (p<0.001), a higher rate of refusal for clerking (71.4% vs. 57.5% of females, p=0.035) and a higher rate of patients declining consent for internal examination (93.3% vs. 67.6% of females, p<0.001). The majority of male students felt that their gender negatively affected their learning experience (87% vs. 27.4% of the female students, p<0.001). Male students reported a significantly higher proportion of discrimination against their gender by medical officers (p=0.018) and specialists/consultants (p<0.001) compared to females but there was no discrimination between genders by staff nurses or house officers. A majority (58%) of female students stated an interest in pursuing O&G as a future career compared to 31.2% of male students.
CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirmed that gender bias exists in our clinical setting as male students gain significantly less experience than female students in pelvic examination skills. We also demonstrated that compared to female students, male students experience higher levels of discrimination against their gender by trainers who are medical officers and specialists/consultants. Trainers must improve their attitudes towards male students, to encourage them and make them feel welcome in the clinical area. We must minimize gender discrimination and educational inequities experienced by male students, in order to improve their learning experience.
KEYWORDS: Gender discrimination; Obstetrics and gynaecology; Training

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism*
Fulltext Impacts of gender bias

Khalib, A.L., Suriyati, A.A.

Malaysian Journal of Community Health, 2007;13(1):1-10.
MyJurnal

Gender bias are most obvious in the distribution of income and wealth. This reflects women’s unequal position in the labour market , their less favorable treatment in most social security systems and their lower status within the household. Discrimination against women is also evident in the political sphere. Their access to power is not commensurate with their numbers, their needs or their contributions as citizens. As well as affecting women’s physical and mental health, gender bias also affect the quality of the services they receive. In most developed countries, women are offered equal access to basic health care. However their use of those service may be hindered by a number of gender related factors which are likely to affect poor women in particular. In health organization, gender bias gives significant impact to the evaluation of staff performance, increase stress level and miscommunication. It is also influence the leadership style and also can create ‘glass ceiling’ phenomenon. Job dissatisfaction , absenteeism and high turn over are also the consequences of gender bias. Alongside the development of gender sensitive methods of routine data collection, gender bias in health research will also need to be addressed. Most biomedical research continues to be based on the unstated assumption that women and men are physiologically similar in all respects apart from their reproductive systems. Other biological differences are ignored, as are the social/gender differences that have such a major impact on health.

Matched MeSH terms: Sexism