Women’s health research got a serious push only after activists like Gloria Steinem forced governments to admit that medicine had been studying men’s bodies and calling it “human” health for decades.
Key Takeaways
- Gloria Steinem’s activism in the 1990s helped push the US to mandate women in clinical trials — a rule India still doesn’t fully enforce.
- Before 1993, most drugs sold in India and worldwide were tested mainly on men, then given to women at the same dose.
- Heart attacks, depression treatment, and even paracetamol dosing can affect women differently — but Indian prescriptions rarely account for this.
- Women’s health research in India is improving, but the closest good gynaecologist or cardiologist for women is still a two-hour bus ride for most rural families.
The Indian Express recently ran a piece connecting Gloria Steinem’s decades of advocacy to a question that should worry every Indian household: is the medicine your mother or wife takes actually tested on women’s bodies? For most of modern medical history, the honest answer was no.
Who Is Gloria Steinem and Why Does She Matter to Health Research?
Steinem is the American feminist writer and organiser who co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971. She’s known in India mostly for her writing on gender equality, not medicine. But her real, lasting impact on women’s health research came from a quieter fight — getting women included in the clinical trials that decide which drugs reach the market.
Through the 1970s and 80s, US federal research guidelines actively excluded women of “childbearing potential” from early drug trials, citing pregnancy risk. The unintended result: heart disease, painkillers, and even aspirin dosages were calibrated almost entirely on male physiology. Steinem, alongside the Society for Women’s Health Research, pushed the US Congress to pass the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, which finally required women and minorities in federally funded trials.
Why Should an Indian Reader Care About a 1993 US Law?
Because India’s drug approval system, run by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, has historically leaned on the same international trial data. If the original American or European trial had 90% male participants, an Indian woman prescribed that same drug at the same dose is essentially getting a best guess, not a tested answer.
This isn’t a small technical footnote. Women metabolise many drugs slower due to differences in body fat, hormones, and liver enzymes. A 2013 US FDA move to halve the recommended dose of the sleep drug zolpidem for women — after ten years of women reporting groggy, dangerous mornings — is the clearest proof this gap has real consequences. That correction came twenty years after Steinem’s push began.
How Did Women’s Health Research Actually Change After the 1990s?
Progress has been real, but slow and uneven. Here’s a rough timeline of what shifted globally, and what trickled down to India:
| Year | Change | Effect on Indian Women |
| 1993 | US NIH Revitalization Act mandates women in trials | Indirect — better global trial data over time |
| 2005 | India’s Clinical Trials Registry launched | More transparency, but sex-based reporting still patchy |
| 2013 | FDA halves zolpidem dose for women | Highlighted sex-based dosing gaps worldwide |
| 2019 | ICMR issues stronger ethics guidelines on trial diversity | More Indian trials now report sex-disaggregated data |
| 2023-24 | Rise in India-specific women’s health startups (menstrual, menopause, fertility) | More research funding, but mostly urban and private |
Notice the pattern. Every real gain took roughly a decade to show up. That’s the honest pace of women’s health research reform — nothing changes overnight, and India, as usual, gets the benefit a few years after the West does.
What Does This Mean for an Ordinary Indian Woman Today?
Take something as basic as a heart attack. Doctors in Delhi and Mumbai hospitals now confirm that women’s heart attack symptoms — nausea, jaw pain, extreme fatigue — often look nothing like the textbook “crushing chest pain” model built from male patients. Yet ASHA workers in rural clinics are rarely trained to spot this difference, because the training material itself was built on old research assumptions.
Then there’s cost. Even where better, women-specific health data exists, acting on it costs money most families don’t have spare. A cardiac stress test in a metro private hospital can run ₹3,000-6,000. In a district hospital, if the equipment even exists, it’s a fraction of that — but the wait can stretch for weeks. Good women’s health research from WHO means nothing if the nearest facility to apply it is three hours away by shared auto and bus.
An India-Specific Angle: The ASHA and PHC Reality Check
Here’s the part most coverage of Steinem’s legacy misses. India already has a massive frontline health network — nearly 10 lakh ASHA workers and over 1.5 lakh primary health centres. The problem isn’t a total absence of research; it’s that global women’s health research findings rarely get translated into the training manuals these frontline workers actually use.
A PHC nurse in rural Bihar or Odisha is more likely to have been trained on generic maternal-care checklists from the 1990s than on updated findings about how women present differently for heart disease, thyroid disorders, or depression. The research exists. The last-mile translation doesn’t.
What Can Actually Be Done With Limited Money and Infrastructure?
- Push state health departments to update PHC training modules with sex-specific symptom checklists — this costs printing and training time, not new equipment.
- Demand that Indian clinical trials publish sex-disaggregated results, as ICMR guidelines already technically require.
- Use free government schemes like Ayushman Bharat for basic diagnostic tests before assuming a symptom is “just stress” or “just tiredness” — a common dismissal women report facing.
- Support local NGOs and college health camps that specifically screen women, since these often catch what routine care misses.
FAQ
Did Gloria Steinem work in medicine or health science herself?
No. Steinem is a writer and activist, not a doctor or scientist. Her contribution was political and organisational — lobbying US lawmakers and health bodies to legally require women’s inclusion in clinical trials.
Is women’s health research in India improving?
Yes, gradually. ICMR guidelines now push for more sex-based data reporting, and private-sector interest in women’s health (fertility, menopause, PCOS) has grown sharply since 2020. But rural access still lags far behind research progress.
Why were women historically excluded from drug trials?
Mainly citing fears about hormonal fluctuations complicating data, and concerns over unknown pregnancy risk. Critics like Steinem argued this “protection” left women’s actual health needs unstudied for decades.
Does this affect common medicines like paracetamol or painkillers?
Dosing research shows women can process some drugs differently due to body composition and hormones. Most standard painkillers remain broadly safe, but sleep aids and certain heart medications have shown clear sex-based dosing gaps.
Where can an Indian woman get affordable health screening today?
Government PHCs and Ayushman Bharat-empanelled hospitals offer free or subsidised basic screening. Urban co-operative and municipal hospitals are usually cheaper than private chains for tests like ECGs and blood work.
Gloria Steinem didn’t invent a vaccine or discover a disease. What she did was force a system to admit its blind spot, and that fight over women’s health research is still playing out in Indian clinics today, just decades behind and several rupees short.