I think it was because taking experimental drugs could harm a fetus in the womb of a woman who may not yet know she is pregnant.
Women who were obviously carrying a child were excluded for the same reason.
But overall, there was not a very sophisticated understanding of the physical differences between males and females, and that testing an experimental liver drug on males only would be good enough to determine its safety and efficacy in both men and women, because a liver is a liver, right?
I think this could’ve been avoided by testing for pregnancy first. Or just waiting a month or two before the start of clinical trials.
In my opinion, a lot of the hesitancy in using women in these trials comes from the old fashioned notion of women need to be protected, and not exposed to danger. You know, women and children first sort of thing.
What @Spiff said and there is more :
" In 1977, in the US, women of childbearing age were excluded from drug trials, because of the thalidomide scandal.1 Women remain under-represented in studies. Menstrual cycle impacts have been found for antipsychotics, antihistamines, antibiotics, and heart medication, meaning that dosages can sometimes be too high or too low,2 and drug-induced arrhythmias more likely.3,4 UK research suggests that women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack,5 not only because doctors fail to recognise signs, formerly attributed as ‘atypical,’ but also that biomarkers are geared towards men, for example, the normal diagnostic threshold of troponin may be too high for women.6 Even medical textbooks have a male default bias,7 and medical curricula have been found lacking in gender-related issues.8"
Maybe - but it was also because of possible effects of the menstrual cycle. So instead of clinical trials that attempt to account for the effects of hormonal cycles , just test them all on men who are assumed not to have cycles. Ignore that the drugs may work differently in women, or that dosages may need to be adjusted due to menstrual cycles etc.
Here’s a similar one. For a book project my wife was buying an RV to drive around the country with our kids. We went to about 3 RV places who refused to talk to her, only to me. Since I was not going, and was never going to drive the thing, that was stupid. I think she finally went by herself or I stayed in the car. Some idiot salesmen (men, natch) lost big commissions because of this.
I think taking a look at the loss of wealth and lives in pursuit of political change, in places like Afghanistan or Iraq. In most cases that money was funnelled into corruption or exploitation in one form or another. Most of the soldiers on the payroll never existed in many cases.
It’s seems clear to me today that the US didn’t back the wrong horse so much as the wrong gender.
They should have armed and enlisted the women. As oppressed persons they already have substantial existing back channels to info or intel, they already handle risk and know who to trust, how to give nothing away. Impossible to identify, handy for carrying weapons those shrouds would have been put to good use.
I don’t think so, but at least part of that is because (as I understand it) it’s easier to reverse a vasectomy than it is a tubal ligation. Life’s not fair, and sometimes the unfairness comes from biology.
(which is not to say that we shouldn’t fix the unfairness that we can fix)
It is indeed now easier to reverse a vasectomy than a tubal ligation ( although I’m not sure it always was) but a large part of the reason is that doctors believe women are more likely to change their mind.
As has been said, there’s a lot of institutional misogyny in Orthodox Judaism. It’s high on the list of reasons I am not Orthodox. A Jewish man who follows none of the commandments and doesn’t know Hebrew can count for the minyan (the quorum of ten needed for a service). But a scrupulously observant woman who has memorized the prayerbook cannot be included. Stupid and offensive.
A larger part, IMHO, is that men are presumed to own their own fertility, whereas a woman is less valuable to men if she’s not fertile. Her fertility isn’t hers, her husband has an ownership interest in the minds of many.
And the “change her mind” isn’t so much about women being fickle as about women needing children to be valuable and complete, so of course she’ll eventually realize that and come around.
This made me giggle a bit. My brother bought a car some years back when voice recognition was fairly new. FWIW, his voice is in the typical range for a man. But for some reason, the car couldn’t recognize his commands. The salesman had no problems getting it to work. Then my brother finally got it to respond - by doing an over-the-top Southern belle voice! [/end hijack]
In my own family, Mom was a practitioner. When I was about 11 or so (in the mid-60s), she sat me down and told me that only my brother would be going to private high school because he’d be getting married and supporting a family. The girls would be going to public school.
Brother got married… then divorced… no kids, no family to support. I got married, had a kid, and was the sole support of our family for 3 years while my husband went to college. Guess that public school education didn’t hold me back too much.
When I was 19, I decided to join the Navy. I had to get a permission slip signed by my dad because even tho I could vote, I couldn’t enlist of my own accord.
Oh, and car buying. I’d be asking the salesguy about safety features and mileage and suchlike, and he’d be telling me about what colors we could get and showing me the mirror on the visor. He didn’t make the sale either.
I’ve lost track of how many times we’d be at boat shows looking around and various vendors tried to entice me with their trays of jewelry. We’re looking at winches - what makes you think I care about your sparklies? Oh, right, I have tits…
Then there was the time I wanted to get an estimate for replacing the windows in our house. The salesguy flat out told me he wouldn’t talk to me without my husband. No sale, dude.
It still bugs me that they did this on “The Big Bang Theory” twice. Were there no women in the writing room?
A jaw dropper from when I was a kid was Isaac Hayes’ character Gandolph Fitch on “The Rockford Files.” A former cellmate, he hired Rockford to find out who actually killed his wife, maintaining he’d be framed. Turned out Gandy had been framed - his wife killed herself to escape the abuse, and framed him as her last act. Fitch, stunned that the woman he “loved” was driven to such straits by his abuse, is reassured by Rockford: “Hey, man, she kept coming back.”
“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.” - Dave Barry
Similarly, I used to take my Mom to the doctor. I took a notepad to just capture what was said. My mom would ask a question and the doc would respond to me. Umm. No. That’s her right there.
My ex (before I knew her) worked and saved her money to buy a car. She brought her dad along for advice when shopping for one but it was her money, her choice.
The first two places they went to the salesmen mostly ignored her and would talk to her dad. Her dad would be clear with them that he was not buying the car, his daughter was and they should talk to her. They still kept talking to him. So they’d leave.
The third place finally had a salesman who mostly engaged with her when showing the cars.
I was twice told by female coworkers that they were treated differently, and worse, by support staff than the other men and I who were at the same professional level - including by female support staff. Hard to figure that out. I never saw it happen, but I have no reason to doubt it did.
Misogyny has always baffled me, and it still does. None of us would be here without a woman having carried us for nine months or so and then given birth. Sheer gratitude should make us all kinder to women. Not all moms are great, of course, and some are terrible - but I just don’t get the systemic and/or traditional subordination of women.
I wonder how much is actual misogyny and how much is stupidity? I have known more than a few guys who absolutely got weird around women. It was not that they hated women. They just seemed to short-circuit when around them and not really know how to act. This was exacerbated if the woman was around their age (so, less problems if talking to grandma).
I dunno. I never figured it out. It was very strange.
USDA mid 90’s Rural community. Very hostile to women in the field, openly critical of the hiring of females as field techs was said those jobs should go to men. Of course the ladies who ran the ag office were exempt from harassment as they were in their place subordinate to all the men.
I had a prof who appeared delighted at the number of women taking his science class, and he offered to write a recommendation for me for an internship but it never materialized. When I got a call from him I was relieved that he was coming through for me but no he wanted to sell me a subscription to a journal of which he’d get for free if he had a certain number of students buy it. I asked if he had the rec ready, no he said he’d been busy. I said no thanks to the subscription and rescinded my request for his support. Didn’t need it afterall.
I remember a women in a position of authority at the USDA was a speaker at a conference. She wasted no time up front in self deprecation regarding her cooking skills, which got chuckles from the crusty dudes in the audience. Like she had to prove she was to be taken seriously by eschewing traditional roles. Whatever works to gain professional respect I guess