Today, , marks the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. However, behind the customary tributes, the reality revealed by the numbers is sobering. In France, only 13% of women with higher education degrees are in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, compared to 40% of all students, according to a 2024 report from the Académie des sciences.
This disparity begins in childhood. As early as age six, girls already perceive intelligence as a masculine attribute. A study published several years ago in the journal Science illuminated this reality: while both boys and girls associate “genius” with their own gender at age five, by age six, significantly fewer girls identify someone of their own sex as “very, very intelligent.” This early setback is accompanied by an avoidance of activities presented as intellectually demanding, marking the beginning of a devaluation that ultimately creates a glass ceiling in adulthood.
A Science Thought About by Men, on Male Models
The situation in biology and health is paradoxical: women are the majority among graduates and constitute the vast majority of our research personnel, but their presence dwindles as one moves up the hierarchy. My own experience has taught me that skills and qualifications alone are not enough; one must also break down the imposter syndrome fostered by a system that too often requires women to prove what is presumed of men.
But beyond parity in our numbers, an even more vital battle must be fought: that of taking sex and gender into account in biomedical research. Science is not neutral. For too long, it has been thought about by men, on male models, to the detriment of women’s health.
Myocardial infarction, the leading cause of death among French women, illustrates this blindness: in the event of a crisis, women receive care an average of thirty minutes later and have a more than doubled hospital mortality rate (9.6% versus 3.9%), according to the Académie nationale de médecine. In the United States, eight of the ten drugs withdrawn from the market between 1997 and 2000 presented greater risks for women. Ignoring these differences is not neutrality; it is a fault.
Moving Towards True Personalized Medicine
To correct this trajectory, we must act radically: invoke the consideration of sex and gender as essential variables in research projects. This paradigm shift is not an ideological stance but a requirement of rigor to transform the quality of our discoveries.
By integrating this data, we lift the veil on biological mechanisms previously underestimated: at the tissue level, systematic differences in gene expression and regulation between the sexes modulate, among other things, immunity, the biological circuits of pain, and the risk of disease.
Ceasing to prioritize male models to avoid a supposed “hormonal variability” helps ensure that tomorrow’s treatments are safe for everyone. Integrating these variables is the only way to evolve from standardized medicine to truly adaptive and personalized medicine.
Transforming Our Research Institutions
It is time to move from superficial awareness to structural action. We must act early, starting in school, to deconstruct gender biases, but also to transform our research institutions. It is not just about allowing little girls to dream of brilliant careers; it is about guaranteeing a medicine that no longer leaves half of humanity in the blind spot of knowledge. This transformation requires creating a framework that encourages, facilitates, and values the integration of “sex-specific” dimensions into research.
Funding agencies have already initiated this movement by requiring projects to justify their consideration of sex and gender when they influence the mechanisms studied. We can go further by systematically providing teams with resources, training, methodological guides, and explicitly recognizing the scientific value of these approaches in project evaluation. Lives depend on it. The science of tomorrow will be inclusive or it will not be an exact science. Research must return to what it should never have ceased to be: a universal quest, made by all, for the benefit of each and every one.
