Overview

I recently presented at TherapyLive Pelvic Health on the subject of female-specific research. Initially, when I received the invite, I accepted for two main reasons: 1) We need people speaking up about the female data gap in this field and; 2) I want my students to see that females do get invited to do talks and this should be normalised. In the build up to the talk, I became more aware that this was a subject that is really close to my heart and one that I hope to be able to discuss more frequently within my own University and more widely. I thought I would use the talk to speak out about the issues of male-dominance within sport and exercise science and medicine academic culture, the language used and the impact our male-dominant systems have on player welfare.

Changing the academic culture within which sport and exercise science and medicine research is created is a much-needed change for most Universities. Whilst I am generally optimistic about our direction of travel, we need to acknowledge we have some way to go and what we can each do to be part of the change we want to see. Rather than looking at the negatives, I decided to provide examples of how my own University had made positive change by creating female role models and, by addressing hidden masculinity in some educational content and gender imbalances in programme teaching staff. I closed with discussing how critical it is that we have strong collaborations with clinicians and academics to help drive research.

Being able to speak on this topic was a really energising experience, it led to some great discussions and I hope these are the start of making the much-needed change within sport and exercise science and medicine.

A couple of things touched upon in the talk are outlined in more detail below.

Athlete as male by default & females as special populations

The default way that words such as athlete, player, exerciser are often used in sport and exercise science and medicine is to represent males. Check out injury related studies on male and female athletes. Often titles will say ‘female athletes’ or ‘female players’ if using a female cohort, but just ‘athlete’ or ‘players’ when using a male cohort. This is sometimes also supported by the imagery used when teaching students, which typically shows males playing sport or getting injured. To compound this issue further, we often see that in text books and modules that females are referred to as a ‘special population’. As if seeing a female athlete is not common practice and requires specialist knowledge. Understanding female-specific considerations (e.g., breast support, menstrual cycle) should be standard knowledge for sport and exercise science and medicine practitioners. Educators, podcasters and bloggers and anyone else involved in creating content all have a responsibility to address this hidden masculinity in our language and breaking down the perception that females are a special population. Take a look at the content you create and see if you can start addressing these issues. I know I've had to look back over pages on my own website to correct things.

Clinical and academic collaborations to inform female player welfare

I’ve come to realise that I have been institutionalised to create research from a male perspective. Having been exposed for many years to the default male athlete and not exposed to female-driven perspectives, this was inevitable really. Working collaboratively with clinicians who routinely see females has opened by eyes to aspects we ignore in our research. There is no doubt in my mind that collaborations between academics and clinicians can help drive the female research agenda. Collectively, we can inform the creation of a player welfare system that is fit for females. This is a critical need for most sports, where player welfare is typically informed by male researchers, working in male sport, using male data. So, we need to start getting female data. I am always happy to discuss female research as well as making female-specific health and monitoring systems, so reach out if this is something of interest to you - and we can start building our female-specific datasets!