3 The default male in sports science research

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The image shows a man on a cycle ergometer with electrodes on his chest and a mask on his face. He is completing a fitness test.

You’ll start with Dr Emma Ross from The Well HQ [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] explaining the gap that exists between the number of research studies using male and female subjects and why this is so problematic.

Activity 3 How much research is female specific?

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video below where Dr Emma Ross explains the number of research studies that are done on females only and the impact it has on female athletes. Then answer the following questions:

1. How much sports science research is conducted exclusively on females?
2. Why are mixed male and female athlete studies of limited use to female athletes?

Download this video clip.Video player: boc_sfps_1_session1_activity2.mp4

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Transcript

EMMA ROSS

When we look at sport and exercise science research, one of the most surprising bits of data that we see is how little research is actually done on women. So when you look at research that’s done exclusively on females, in 2015, a survey was done that found only 4% of the research done in the top three sport and exercise science journals was done exclusively on females. And that means that things like the menstrual cycle, and breast health, and pelvic health, and injury in women, that’s exclusive to females. And only 4% of the research was being done in those areas.

Now we’ve just done a survey from 2016 to 2020 to see whether the dial has moved at all and actually, it has, but the bad news is very little. So only 6% of research is currently done exclusively on females when you look at sport and exercise science. So when we look at that 6%, it’s not that the other 94% is done exclusively on males, there is a body of research that's done using males and females together in the experiments and the data collection. But unfortunately, that research doesn’t well it doesn’t serve anyone very well but particularly it doesn’t serve females particularly well.

Because it’s not taking into account something like the menstrual cycle, which is where a female’s physiology is going to change as her hormones fluctuate across the cycle. And if you’re not controlling for that as part of your experiment, then the outcomes really aren’t particularly useful. Now, if the researchers have been quite diligent and they are controlling for the time of the menstrual cycle and the female participants, what they tend to do is study the females when their cycle hormones, that’s oestrogen and progesterone, are at the lowest at the beginning of the cycle. Now that’s when females most closely resemble males. And so again, the outcomes aren’t particularly useful when we’re trying to design training and coaching strategies for female athletes.

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Discussion

1. The number of research studies conducted exclusively over a five-year period between 2016 and 2020 showed that 6% of research is female specific. This is almost a 50% increase on the previous five-year period but is still surprisingly low. There are studies that include both make and female subjects but this is still low. According to Cowley et al. (2021) this figure is around 34%.
2. The menstrual cycle with its fluctuating hormones creates physiological differences throughout its course so research that will benefit females needs to take these changes into consideration. But it makes research more expensive and time consuming. Many mixed research studies control this by studying females when their hormones are lowest, in the early stages of the menstrual cycle, as this will have less impact on the research findings. However, when a female’s hormones are low their physiology will most resemble men’s physiology, and this limits the value of any research when applied to female athletic performance.

This limited amount of female-specific research has a serious impact on female performance, as research conducted predominantly on men, or when women most resemble men, is not useful when developing training schedules and maximising female athletic performance.

This focus on male research is referred to as ‘the default male in research’ and it is not a positive situation for females who have a menstrual cycle, periods, breasts and slight differences in the structure of their skeleton. As well as this, females experience the physiological changes across their lifecycle through puberty, fertility, that may include pregnancy and post-natal periods, and finally the menopause.

These physical and physiological differences combined with a reluctance to talk about them, due to a lack of knowledge and understanding as well as their being taboo in some social circles, means that the ‘female part’ of being a female athlete or exerciser is often overlooked. As a result sport and fitness environments are often not optimised for women and limit their chances of positive outcomes.