Research Across the Female Life Cycle: Reframing the Narrative for Health and Performance in Athletic Females and Showcasing Solutions to Drive Advancements in Research and Translation

Over the last few decades, there has been an unprecedented growth in the number of females in sport and exercise, including an exponential rise in female participation, alongside an increased interest and investment in female sport. This success in many aspects underscores the demand for and importance of female-specific research to optimize health, participation, and performance of athletic females. It has also brought awareness to the numerous inequities that exist between females and males. Indeed, the prevailing narrative within sport and exercise science focuses on the disparity of research in females compared with males, which has led to a lack of a critical mass of high-quality data on athletic females. While acknowledging the current gap and the need for further higher quality data, there is still a body of knowledge pertaining to athletic females spanning over a century. This existing literature, amid its criticisms, offers a valuable foundation to build upon for current translation and to inform future research. Thus, it is essential to acknowledge, interpret, and apply prior learnings from previous work, while also considering any limitations. This commentary proposes a reframing of the current narrative that there is an absence of useful data in athletic females, to one that recognizes both the strides made and how past findings can be integrated into practice today as well as inform future research directions. It also addresses the opportunities that remain, and how a more comprehensive and pragmatic body of knowledge can be developed and translated to better serve athletic females in the future.

Duke Scholars

Author Carly Brantner Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Division of Biostatistics