This refers to the lack of gender-specific data (for example in medicine) and the fact that the majority of data is generated by and with men. There are many reasons for this, but viewing men as representatives for all people is part of a long tradition.
Lack of perspectives
“Data helps us to classify and compare things, but that does not mean that it automatically reflects the whole reality,” says Elisabeth Anna Günther. She researches intersectionality, i.e. the interplay of different forms of discrimination, in education and digitalization at the University of Vienna.
“What data basis you use is one issue, the other is who processes the data. In Europe, 80 percent of people working in information and communications technology are men. That is not a problem per se, but when it comes to the questions you use to approach the data, there is still a lack of perspective,” says the scientist.
Consequences of the data gap in medicine
One example is medicine. For decades, women were excluded from participating in clinical drug trials because it was assumed that they would be difficult to study due to their hormonal fluctuations during their periods. Many drugs were therefore only tested on men.
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Researchers at the universities of Berkeley and Chicago made the problem clear in 2020. They demonstrated that the same dose of a drug leads to a higher concentration in the blood of women than in men. In addition, the breakdown of said drug takes significantly longer in a female body than in a male.
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Source: Nachrichten
