Abstract
Including sex and gender considerations in health research is considered essential by many funders and is very useful for policy makers, program developers, clinicians, consumers and other end users. While longstanding confusions and conflations of terminology in the sex and gender field are well documented, newer conceptual confusions and conflations continue to emerge. Contemporary social demands for improved health and equity, as well as increased interest in precision healthcare and medicine, have made obvious the need for sex and gender science, sex and gender-based analyses (SGBA+), considerations of intersectionality, and equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives (EDI) to broaden representation among participants and diversify research agendas. But without a shared and precise understanding of these conceptual areas, fields of study, and approaches and their inter-relationships, more conflation and confusion can occur. This article sets out these areas and argues for more precise operationalization of sex- and gender-related factors in health research and policy initiatives in order to advance these varied agendas in mutually supportive ways.
Highlights
The movement to build ‘sex and gender science’ inherently marries considerations of the body and society and illuminates the many sexed and gendered interconnected complexities attached to health and technology [1,2]
Civil rights movements and contemporary anti-racism groups such as Black Lives Matter have highlighted anti-racism [11], and sexual and gender minority groups and movements advocating for alternatives to heteronormative and gender normative health care have been important in promoting goals such as health and gender equity [12]
In what ways do couple dynamics contribute to initiation and maintenance of substance use, for example? How does a lack of autonomy, freedom of movement or culturally condoned intimate partner violence affect people of different genders? How do heteronormative assumptions in health care provision deny the relational component of illness or healing for gender diverse people or non-heterosexual patients?
Summary
The movement to build ‘sex and gender science’ inherently marries considerations of the body and society and illuminates the many sexed and gendered interconnected complexities attached to health and technology [1,2]. This article offers a conceptual outline of the scope of sex and gender science and its subsets, identifies related theoretical and policy enterprises, and articulates their interactions and intersections. These distinctions are increasingly required as the field expands and changes, both for experienced sex and gender science researchers, clinicians and policy makers, as well as those new to the fields, in order to build common understandings. We argue that in order to achieve equitable precision medicine and health care, we need to consciously build better sex and gender science, and that mapping its sub fields and relevant theoretical and policy. As a cumulative approach, they will improve the evidence base upon which health care, policy and programming rests, and contribute to gender-transformative approaches in health that improve health and gender equity simultaneously
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