Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, and Engineering at Stanford University ’was created through a unique international collaboration of scientists, engineers and gender experts,’ said Founder and Director Londa Schiebinger.
In the United States and Europe, osteoporosis is considered primarily a "woman’s disease" and men are rarely evaluated for the condition, which causes bones to become weak and brittle, and increases the risk of wrist, hip and spine fractures.
Yet recent research has shown that nearly one-third of American and European men will experience a hip fracture linked to the bone disease.
So it’s actually a "man’s disease" too, says Londa Schiebinger, founder and director of Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, and Engineering, citing the findings of the project’s case study, Osteoporosis Research in Men: Rethinking Standards and Reference Models.
While gender bias had long obscured the plight of men who were silently suffering from osteoporosis, shining the light of sex and gender analysis on the problem led to better ways to evaluate their fracture risks, she said.
"We reviewed the existing research on osteoporosis and identified how applying sophisticated methods of sex and gender analysis improved the science and led to a new conception of the disease," said Schiebinger , the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford.
Future advances aim at preventing, diagnosing and treating osteoporosis in men, which strikes them in their 70s, about 10 years later than women, and could help improve – and prolong – the lives of elderly men.
"When men break their hips they don’t survive as well as women do – and no one yet knows why," Schiebinger said.
Case studies available
Since Schiebinger launched the Gendered Innovations project in the summer of 2009, the project has produced 14 case studies to demonstrate how applying sex and gender analysis to research studies has helped create new knowledge and technologies.
The project was initiated with start-up funding from Stanford’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Schiebinger, a former director of the Clayman Institute, is the editor of the 2008 book, Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering.
All the project’s peer-reviewed case studies can be found on its website, including:
- Stem Cells: Analyzing Sex
- Animal Research: Designing Health and Biomedical Research
- De-Gendering the Knee: Overemphasizing Sex Differences as a Problem
- Heart Disease in Women: Formulating Research Questions
- Pregnant Crash Test Dummies: Rethinking Standards and Reference Models
- Water: Participatory Research and Design
"The website is a resource for researchers," Schiebinger said. "It’s globally accessible and freely available to anyone with an Internet connection.
An international cast of contributors
The Gendered Innovations project was developed through six international workshops. In 2011, the European Union joined the project, followed by the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2012.
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