A Passionate Cause: Elevating Women to Reshape Medicine
November 22, 2023 | Leadership, Medscape, Women in healthcare, women's health
“We need more outstanding leaders from underrepresented communities, including women and those from different ethnicities”, says Antonella Chadha Santuccione, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Women’s Brain Project in Zurich, Switzerland. We need more medical leaders who are female to eliminate the biases that are inherent in medicine — a discipline that has been mainly shaped by men, she says. “I’m sorry but I’m very passionate about this! It’s my personal battle to fix the issue and reverse the narrative.”
Santuccione gets worked up (in the best way) about changing the dynamics of healthcare, making it less biased toward men. Both she and Wiesje van der Flier, professor and scientific director of the Alzheimer’s Center in Amsterdam UMC in the Netherlands, are leaders in the study of neurological and psychiatric conditions. They explain how women are more prone to neurological and mental disorders than are men.
But it’s more than just prevalence. There are differences in symptoms and progression, and profound differences in treatment response and side effects between men and women. The reasons why are still very poorly studied and understood, especially in clinical practice.
What has led to this dearth of data?
The problem really starts in preclinical research, in the laboratory. Researchers don’t always disclose the sex of the animals used for experiments. “There’s a prejudice [against] female mice having menstrual fluctuations!” says Santuccione. Van der Flier agrees, “[Researchers] prefer male mice—they think female mice are annoying because they have a cycle! And I think, Huh? This can’t be true. Of course they have a cycle!”
When it comes to humans, women are also less represented in clinical trials. Some of the reasons are societal, says Santuccione. For instance, for longer trials, women might not have the necessary child care or available caregivers that would allow them to participate.
Women don’t face obstacles is in the early career stages of neuropsychology, says van der Flier. “The number of young women professionals is far larger than men. But as we progress up the career ladder, something goes wrong.” It’s not necessarily that doors shut, but that “men are more likely to choose men to follow them. That’s why it’s very important for women to support each other.
“And then being female, I’m also too familiar with the idea [of women saying], ‘I’m probably not up to this, perhaps I wouldn’t be good enough,’ van der Flier says. “Again this is why we need to support each other. We always have to think, ‘Well, perhaps I’m not good enough, but if that other person who happens to be a male also would not be good enough, then better that I do it!’” That’s a way of thinking we have to get more familiar with, “to really empower women and make sure we have equal representation” at the top of our field.
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