What bold approaches can we take to rethink how we create and use health information?
Tune in on October 25 for RWJF’s Unscripted series to learn from Sarah Richardson and Keolu Fox about challenging the research status quo and moving closer to health equity. 

This September, members of the GenderSci Lab collectively drafted a letter to the subcommittee of the Journal of the American Medical Association tasked with developing and releasing guidelines for scientists related to reporting gender and sex.

The GenderSci Lab is seeking research assistants for Fall 2024! *Open to Harvard College students only*

This week, members of the GenderSci Lab published a new piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. Authored by the Lab’s historians of medicine and science, Ben Maldonado, Jamie Marsella, Abbie Higgins, and Sarah Richardson, this piece traces how authors in the Journal articulated harmful ideas of innate sex difference.

On April 10, the GenderSci Lab hosted an open house to celebrate our 5th year anniversary and our new space in the Harvard Science Center!

Come to this talk by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Alexandra Kralick about her research on orangutan skeletons.

Our piece in this Cell special issue considers how, in the context of policies mandating the consideration of sex (such as the NIH’s Sex as a Biological Variable policy), basic scientists can operationalize, analyze, and interpret sex-related variation in ways that achieve conceptual and statistical rigor, as well as precision in how such knowledge is applied in the clinic and beyond. 

We are recruiting for a 2-year postdoctoral associate for an NSF-funded project about operationalizations of sex in laboratory science! We especially welcome applications from philosophers of biology, life scientists or biomedical researchers with philosophy or science and technology studies (STS) training, and sociologists of science.

We are recruiting for a new lab manager! Spread the word and apply if you’re interested. Come join our team!

We sat down with Alex Borsa and Mia Miyagi, team leaders for an article out this week in GLQ entitled “The New Genetics of Sexuality,” which serves as a State of the Field review of sexual genetics research. Alex and Mia discuss what they learned while writing the piece and how they hope this work will be used moving forward.

This fall, we welcomed Alexandra Kralick to the GenderSci Lab as our new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation postdoctoral associate! We sat down with Alexandra for a Q&A to learn more about her plans and work in the lab!

We sat down to talk with Katie Lee, who recently became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. Katie has been an active member of GSL for several years and provides useful insight from her gender studies, bioanthropology, and engineering background.

The GenderSci lab has a new article out this week in Social Science and Medicine entitled “A Gender Hypothesis of sex disparities in adverse drug events,” which builds on findings from an article released in JAMA Network Open earlier this fall: “Adverse Drug Events by Sex After Adjusting for Baseline Rates of Drug Use.” 

This week, the GenderSci Lab has a new paper out in Social Studies of Science, “Making a ‘Sex-Difference Fact’: Ambien Dosing at the Interface of Policy, Regulation, Women’s Health, and Biology (open access).” The paper analyzes the first drug ever to be issued with an FDA mandated differential dose for men and women on the drug’s label.

While growing financial investment in “women’s health” has been celebrated by many as a victory for women and a sign of progress within the healthcare system, we challenge this idea in our new Lancet perspective “Women’s Health, Inc.”

The Harvard GenderSci Lab invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and Science. The postdoc will contribute to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded project entitled “Accelerating the integration of social factors into sex-related health disparities science.”

We sat down to talk with Joe Bruch, who recently became a professor of public health sciences at The University of Chicago. Joe has been an active member of GSL since its founding and directs the Health Care Finance team.

This September, members of the GenderSci Lab collectively drafted a letter to the subcommittee tasked with developing and releasing a Federal Evidence Agenda on LGBTQI+ Equity.

In this Friday’s issue of Science the GenderSci Lab has a peer-reviewed Policy Forum article,“Law, Policy, Biology, and Sex: Critical Issues for Researchers.” In this explainer, we provide additional background and context on this piece, and answer common questions.

Today, the GenderSci Lab has a new commentary out in Cell Reports Medicine, which argues that mandates to make male-female sex comparisons in all areas of biomedical research conflict with precision medicine’s goal of individualized and targeted treatments.