by admin | Nov 28, 2025 | Publications
Shirin Heidari, Roli Mathur, Angèle Gayet-Ageron, Ann Zeta George, Kristin Marie Bivens, Mantoa Mokhachane, Johannes J M van Delden, Jill Gardner, Thomas F Babor
The Lancet – November 28, 2025
The current sociopolitical climate has made science a contested terrain. Polemical rhetoric and attempts to subordinate science to ideology are not only compromising research integrity, but also eroding public trust. Gender is central to these contestations: efforts to erase, ignore, and deny identities or politicise gender scholarship undermine scientific accuracy and accountability. Sex and gender, which defy binaries, shape risk exposure, disease manifestation, health-care access, and outcomes. Ignoring these valid scientific categories will produce biased evidence with health consequences.
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by admin | Nov 15, 2025 | Publications
Shirin Heidari, Thomas F Babor, Joan Marsh, Bahar Mehmani, Roli Mathur
The Lancet – November 15, 2025
We welcome the revised Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) 2025 guidelines published in The Lancet and commend the efforts to enhance transparency and rigour in clinical trial protocols. Accurate and transparent reporting is fundamental to ensuring the validity of clinical trial findings, enhancing reproducibility and clarifying the generalisability of results across diverse populations. The updated SPIRIT guidelines introduce several important improvements, including clearer definitions of protocol contributors and strengthened guidance on data sharing and trial registration, which move us towards greater transparency and accountability in clinical research. However, we note with concern the continued absence of specific recommendations regarding sex and gender considerations, including how these intersect with other variables. This lack of recommendations is a crucial gap, given the persistent under-representation of women in clinical trials and the growing body of evidence about the risks of gender bias in trial design and reporting.
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by admin | Sep 3, 2025 | Publications
Londa Schiebinger , Matthias Nielsen , Elena Gissi , Shirin Heidari , Richard Horton , Kari Nadeau , Dorothy Ngila , Safiya Noble , Hee Young Paik ,Girmaw Abebe Tadesse , Eddy Y Zheng , James Zou , Joan Marsh
European Science Editing (ESE) – September 3, 2025
Intersectional analysis goes beyond consideration of single variables to examine the compounded impact at the intersections of, for example, gender and race, or geographical location and caste. The Guidelines for Intersectional Analysis in Science and Technology (GIST) help researchers, journal editors, and funding agencies systematically integrate intersectional analysis into relevant domains of science and technology. These guidelines serve as a roadmap for quantitative intersectional analysis throughout the research process—from setting strategic research priorities and shaping research questions to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Here we provide a checklist to facilitate author and journal editor compliance with the guidelines. We recommend that the GIST checklist be added to journals’ “Information for Authors”. The goal is to reset the research default to include intersectional analysis, where appropriate. Intersectional analysis leads to better science: precision in research best guides effective social and environmental policies that, in turn, enhance global equity and sustainability.
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by admin | Apr 15, 2025 | Publications
Elise M Garton, Gavin Allman, Hyo Sook Bae, Kalina Duncan, Ibithal Fadhil, Nazik Hammad, Shirin Heidari, Meritxell Mallafré-Larrosa, Jennifer Moodley, Rachel Nugent, Isabelle Soerjomataram, Carolyn D Taylor, Karla Unger-Saldaña, Verna Vanderpuye, Ophira Ginsburg.
The Lancet – April 15, 2025
The Lancet Commission on women, power, and cancer,1 hereafter referred to as the Commission, was created to address urgent questions at the intersection of social inequality, cancer risk and outcomes, and the status of women in society. Cancer is an increasingly important public health threat and economic challenge to all people worldwide, but has a disproportionate impact on the lives and livelihoods of women, which creates downstream impacts for society. The Commission applied an intersectional feminist lens2 to inform a nuanced, evidence-based, gendered approach to cancer risk and cancer control in response to this threat. The Commission report was published in September, 2023, with ten key findings and corresponding priority recommendations directed at a broad range of stakeholder communities: international organisations, national and subnational governments, researchers and research funders, civil society, and the private sector.1 To increase the likelihood that the recommendations set out in the Commission will be adopted and operationalised by multiple stakeholders, and to support the uptake of these recommendations, the authors proposed a framework and set of key performance indicators to guide implementation and to increase engagement of the global community at the nexus of gender, power, and cancer.
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by admin | Apr 9, 2025 | Publications
Mathias Wullum Nielsen, Elena Gissi, Shirin Heidari, Richard Horton, Kari C. Nadeau, Dorothy Ngila, Safiya Umoja Noble, Hee Young Paik, Girmaw Abebe Tadesse, Eddy Y. Zeng, James Zou, Londa Schiebinger
Nature – April 9, 2025
Intersectionality describes interdependent systems of inequality related to sex, gender, race, age, class and other socio-political dimensions. By focusing on the compounded effects of social categories, intersectional analysis can enhance the accuracy and experimental efficiency of science. Here we extend intersectional approaches that were predominantly developed in the humanities, social sciences and public health to the fields of natural science and technology, where this type of analysis is less established. Informed by diverse global and disciplinary examples—from enhancing facial recognition for diverse user bases to mitigating the disproportionate impact of climate change on marginalized populations—we extract methods to demonstrate how quantitative intersectional analysis functions throughout the research process, from strategic considerations for establishing research priorities to formulating research questions, collecting and analysing data and interpreting results. Our goal is to offer a set of guidelines for researchers, peer-reviewed journals and funding agencies that facilitate systematic integration of intersectional analysis into relevant domains of science and technology. Precision in research best guides effective social and environmental policy aimed at achieving global equity and sustainability.
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by admin | Jan 26, 2025 | Publications
Trenell J. Mosley, Rachel A. Zajdel, Ethel Alderet, Janine A. Clayton, Shirin Heidari, Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, Karen Salt, Marie A. Bernard
The Lancet – January, 2025
Enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific and healthcare workforces∗ promotes research innovation and equitable access to quality healthcare. Efforts to advance DEI within the global scientific and healthcare workforces have assumed a new urgency given the strain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the aging of the global population, and the persistent shortages in the healthcare workforce, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Yet, these fields continue to struggle to promote DEI. Considering the impact of intersectionality—how multiple identities interact to create unique experiences of privilege and power—within these workforces will enhance efforts to promote DEI. This series explores the impact of intersectionality on scientific and healthcare workforce DEI and how prominent institutional and structural factors (e.g., sexism and racism), as well as their interpersonal manifestations, can create barriers for workers with multiple intersecting marginalised identities. This paper, the first in a three-part series, describes how intersecting identities interact with workplace inequities and suggests ways to incorporate intersectionality into DEI efforts within the scientific and healthcare workforces.
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