Data | The gender gap in clinical trials and disease funding Premium

Diseases which affect men more received relatively higher funding than those which affected women

Diseases affecting women more receive less funding and women are under-represented in clinical trials

In the U.S., diseases which affect women more receive less funding. Also, women are under-represented in clinical trials.

Many diseases affect men and women differently. Evidence from the U.S. shows that women in general are more susceptible to mental illnesses than men. A similar trend can also be observed among other diseases or conditions such as depression, Alzheimer’s, anxiety disorders, migraines and headaches. On the other hand, in the case of diseases arising due to drug abuse, substance misuse and alcoholism, the impact was more pronounced among men.

Chart 1 | The shows the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) for 42 diseases which affect the U.S. population as of 2015. 

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DALY is a measure to quantify the burden of a disease. DALYs are calculated as the sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality in the population and the years lost due to disability for people living with the health condition.

The larger the DALY, the larger the size of the bubble in Chart 1. Also, the bubbles are coloured based on how the disease disproportionately affects a gender. For instance, depression, mental illness, headaches and other diseases/conditions are given a particular colour as they affect women more. The chart establishes that many diseases affect men and women differently.

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An analysis of funding data reveals a worrying pattern. Those diseases which in general affect men more received relatively higher funding than those which affected women. 

Chart 2 | The chart shows the estimated spending (in $ million) on biomedical research on the 42 diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2023 (vertical axis) and the DALY (in million) for the 42 diseases in 2015 (horizontal axis).

The colour code used in Chart 1 is maintained for Chart 2 as well.

In Chart 2, the mental illness bubble is farthest to the right as it beats other diseases by a wide margin in terms of DALYs. However, it is on the bottom half of Chart 2 as it is estimated to receive less than average funding from the NIH in 2023. In contrast, the HIV/AIDS bubble is almost on top of the chart as it is estimated to receive a lot of funding despite being on the far left as its disease burden is much lower. The point to note here is that women were disproportionately more affected by mental illness while men were affected more by HIV/AIDS.

Similarly, substance misuse (harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substances) is more prevalent among men, and depression, which is more pronounced among women, had a similar disease burden. However, substance misuse research is estimated to receive nearly four times more funding than depression research in 2023. Alzheimer’s disease is the only exception in which a female-dominant disease got relatively more funding.

Chart 3 | The chart shows a study which compared the share of women in DALYs and their share in clinical trials among the five million people who participated in over 20,000 clinical trials between 2000 and 2020 in the U.S.

Chart 4 |The chart shows another study which compared the share of women in DALYs and their share in clinical trials among 0.3 million people conducted in the U.S. between 2016 and 2019. 

The gender gap was not only observed in terms of funding but also recorded during clinical trials. Chart 3 and Chart 4 show that in some high-burden diseases in the medical fields of oncology, neurology, cardiology and psychiatry, the burden of disease was higher among women while their share in clinical trials was not commensurate.

Source: Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (chart 1 and 2), Analysis of Female Enrollment and Participant Sex by Burden of Disease in U.S. clinical trials between 2000 and 2020 (chart 3) and Enrollment of female participants in the United States drug and device phase 1-3 clinical trials between 2016 and 2019 (chart 4).