How Much of HERstory is in the HIStory of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise?

Introduction: Substantial evidence indicates that female individuals have and continue to be underrepresented as research participants and manuscript authors in the sciences, including exercise and applied physiology. Methods: Every article published over the 55-yr history of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise from 1969 until the end of 2023 ( N = 10,371) was reviewed to quantify the inclusion of female research participants and manuscript authors. Results: 8444 human research studies were published over this time with a total of ~46 million participants, 44% of whom were female individuals (25.8 million male vs 20.2 million female research participants). This translates into ~5,600,000 fewer female research participants, or ~100,000 fewer female research participants every year. One contributor to this deficit of female research participants is that 7103 studies included male research participants versus 4676 studies that included female research participants — translating to ~2500 fewer studies on female research participants. Notably, 1011 studies included only female participants versus 3418 studies including only male participants — thus, another ~2400 fewer publications studying only female participants. Female authors accounted for 28% of all the authors over Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise ’s history, which translates into ~21,000 fewer female authors (13,652 female vs 34,462 male manuscript authors). Furthermore, across this history, 3853 articles had female first or last authors, whereas 6124 articles had male first and last authors, which translates into ~2300 fewer manuscripts with female first or last authors. Conclusion: Thus, clearly, there is substantially less of HERstory than HIStory represented in the 55 yr of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise publications.