Women’s Health Research Funding in Canada across 13 years suggests low funding levels with a narrow focus
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Background
Women’s health has historically been undervalued, underrepresented, and underfunded. Sex and gender mandates were introduced in grant competitions to increase women’s health research. This study aimed to understand what type of women’s health research is being funded and prioritized in open grant competitions in Canada.
Methods
Publicly available funded Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) project grant abstracts from 2020 and 2023 were coded for the mention of sex, gender, two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer plus (2S/LGBTQ+), and female-specific research and assessed for changes in research representation and funding. A deeper analysis of funded female-specific grant abstracts from 2023 and 2009-2020 was conducted to assess if grant abstracts focused on the 11 areas of global disease burden and death that disproportionately affect females, and if this has evolved over time.
Results
The percentage of abstracts mentioning sex, gender and 2S/LGBTQ+ doubled or quadrupled from 2020 to 2023, but remained at under 10% of overall funded abstracts. In contrast, female-specific research representation did not change over time, and remained at ∼7% of all research. Importantly, female-specific research largely focused on cancers (breast, gynecologic) or pregnancy. We also examined research funding representation for the top 11 global burden of disease or death for females across the 13 years and observed that cancer accounted for 2.07% of funding, whereas the other top 10 collectively accounted for 2.21% across 13 years.
Conclusions
Despite mandates for integrated sex and gender based analyses in Canada, research acknowledging which population is explored remains under 10%. Mandates are not affecting the percentage of funding for women’s health grants. More efforts and support beyond sex and gender mandates are needed to increase funding for and to diversify female-specific research beyond pregnancy and cancer. Research devoted to women’s health factors is key to achieving personalized medicine and improved health outcomes for everyone.
