News
Stop ‘controlling’ for sex and gender in global health research
SUMMARY
- Sex and gender are often ‘controlled’ for in global health research, which forces the relationship between the predictor and outcome of interest to be the same across sex (ie, males, females and intersex) or gender (ie, men, women and gender minorities).
- There are many examples where controlling for sex, gender or both led to incorrect findings that were detrimental to equitably improving global health.
- Instead of controlling for sex or gender, we urge researchers to consider sex and gender as variables of importance that can explain, rather than confound, their research.