Policies adopted by the U.S. and Canada to include women as research subjects could hurt them in an unexpected way. Rebecca Shansky wanted to do a study on the effects of the estrous cycle (think menstrual cycle, for rats) on specific memory processes and had applied for a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. In the past, she could just submit her proposal with the somewhat intuitive assumption that only female rats would need to be included in the study. Now, though, the Northeastern University scientist has to explain herself — or risk not getting funded. In the end, Shansky got approved to test just female subjects, but not everyone has had such luck. Liisa Galea, director of the graduate program in neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, researches how sex hormones influence brain health and disease in both males and females. When applying for a grant to study a women’s health topic, she was rejected by the funder “citing a need to include male participants,” Galea wrote in a recently published article. A colleague of hers had a similar problem, she added, and was asked to have a male study when looking at the inflammation of the placenta, which develops during pregnancy and is only found in women. | 