Unfortunately for women, the necessity of taking account of biological sex differences in early-stage pharmaceutical research has routinely been neglected, avoided, and rationalized away.
Only in the last 15 to 20 years has overwhelming evidence been amassed to show that sex differences, both large and small, exist at every level of analysis in the human animal.
The discovery of sex differences in the human brain and nervous system should not be seen as a blow to gender equality. Men are not the “gold standard” version of the human species, and women should not be viewed as a deviation from the norm.