SAGER Guidelines Statement

Since healthcare and guidelines for women and minorities has traditionally been fashioned from research done on male cells, animals, and human subjects, the SAGER (Sex and Gender Equity in Research) Guidelines were published in 2016 by the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) in order to provide a comprehensive outline for reporting sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, and interpretations of findings. If these understudied populations are not studied separately, these understudied populations can be disregarded, overlooked, or even harmed because their specific physiology, responses and outcomes are unseen.

The Sex and Gender Health Collaborative of the American Medical Women’s Association, with its century-old advocacy for women’s health and well-being, takes a strong position that the SAGER guidelines should be adopted and followed by every journal editor, textbook publisher, reviewer, and web-based repository of scientific research, using the guidelines summarized below:

We encourage all researchers to enroll women, minorities, and ethnic groups into clinical trials of all phases, using the correct terms for sex and gender. Analysis and data should routinely be reported by sex and gender, and presented regardless of positive or negative results.  Methods to determine sex and/or gender should be described, and resultant data should be interpreted, disaggregated, and reported by these demographic variables.  Additionally, animal, cell, and device studies should also follow these guidelines.