Only 6% of Sports Research Is Done on Women. Here's What That Means for Your Formula

Here's a number worth sitting with. Only 6% of sport and exercise research has been done on women only. Not "included women." Studied women, on their own, as the main subject.

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That stat comes from a 2021 study in the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, and it hasn't moved much since. Most of what we know about training, recovery, dosing, and performance was built on male bodies, then quietly applied to everyone.

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If you formulate supplements, this isn't a fun fact. It's a formulation problem.

This Gap Is Getting Real Money and Attention Right Now

This isn't just an old stat sitting in a journal somewhere. In January 2026, the Women's Health, Sports & Performance Institute opened in Boston, backed by more than $50 million, built specifically to research female athletes across every life stage, including perimenopause. U.S. Soccer's Kang Women's Institute is running active studies right now on how menstrual cycle tracking should shape training. Gatorade's own Body of Science initiative, the source of that 6% stat, launched a research app this year to start collecting real data from everyday women, not just elite athletes in a lab.

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The point is, the industry is finally admitting the gap exists. Formulators who close it in their own products now are going to be ahead of a curve that's about to get crowded.

The Gap Doesn't Stay in the Lab

When most of the research skips women, the gap doesn't just sit in a journal somewhere. It shows up on the shelf. Brands end up shrinking a male formula and calling it "for her," instead of building something around how women's bodies actually work.

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We see this play out in a few repeat patterns.

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The same formula, just a smaller scoop. Body size is one difference between men and women. It's nowhere near the only one. Scaling down a dose based on weight alone ignores hormones, metabolism, and how nutrients get absorbed in the first place.

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A formula built for one steady state. Energy, recovery, and hunger shift across a woman's cycle. Most formulas are built as if that shift doesn't exist, because the research they're based on never tracked it.

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"More" as the default fix. When a product underperforms for female customers, the usual reflex is to add more of the active ingredient. More protein, more caffeine, more of whatever's on the label. But the real issue is often absorption, not dose. Bodies can only use what they actually take in.

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Perimenopause treated as an afterthought. Women over 40 are training, lifting, and competing in bigger numbers every year. Very few formulas are built with that stage of life in mind, even though it's a huge and growing part of the customer base.

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None of this is really anyone's fault. You can't formulate around research that was never done. But it does mean there's a real opening for brands willing to build something better.

Why We're Paying Attention to This

"The data gap in women's sports science isn't a niche issue anymore, it's a competitive one," says NuLiv Science, "Brands that keep formulating off male-only research are going to keep losing repeat customers who feel like the product just wasn't made for them. That's not a marketing problem. That's a formulation problem, and it's fixable."

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That's the piece we think gets missed. You don't always need a brand-new formula to close this gap. Sometimes the fastest fix is making sure the body actually absorbs and uses what's already in the bottle.

Absorption Is the Lever Most Brands Aren't Pulling

This is where AstraGin comes in. AstraGin is formulated to support the absorption of amino acids, vitamins, and other nutrients already in your product, supporting better utilization of what you are already paying for.

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In plain terms, it doesn't add a new ingredient to chase. It helps the body get more out of the ingredients already on your label. For a brand trying to fix underperformance without a full reformulation, that's a much smaller lift than starting from scratch.

Built and Tested With Women in Mind

Then there's Senactiv, which has a published trial in postmenopausal women specifically, one of the exact groups the broader research world has mostly skipped.

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"Most ingredients get tested once and marketed forever," says Richard, NuLiv Science's CEO. "We wanted at least one product on the shelf where a postmenopausal woman isn't an afterthought in the data. She's the actual subject of it."

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If you're formulating for women over 40, that's not a small detail. It's the difference between a product that says it works for her and one that's actually been checked.

What This Means If You're Formulating Right Now

You don't need to wait for the research world to catch up before you build something better. The fastest wins are usually already sitting in your current formula.

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Start by asking where your product might be relying on dose alone to do the work. Then ask whether absorption could be doing some of that heavy lifting instead. And if you're building specifically for women over 40, look for ingredients that were actually tested in that group, not just marketed toward it.

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Ask us for the Senactiv postmenopausal data before you formulate. We'd rather show you the study than have you guess.

Common Questions About Formulating for Women

Why is only 6% of sports science research done on women? Research on women is often seen as more complex to run because of hormonal cycles, so it costs more and takes longer than research on men. That's led decades of studies to either skip women entirely or use them as a small side group instead of the main focus. The result is a research base that's mostly built around male physiology.

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Does a lower dose for women actually fix the research gap? Not on its own. Scaling a formula down by body weight only adjusts for size. It doesn't account for hormonal shifts, absorption differences, or how nutrient needs change across a woman's cycle or life stage. A smaller scoop of the same formula is still the same formula.

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What is AstraGin used for in supplement formulas? AstraGin is formulated to support the absorption of amino acids, vitamins, and other nutrients already in a product, so the body can actually use more of what's already on the label, instead of requiring a brand to add more of an active ingredient.

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Is Senactiv backed by research on women specifically? Yes. Senactiv has a published clinical trial conducted in postmenopausal women, a group that's historically been left out of most sports and exercise research entirely.

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What should a brand do first if their formula underperforms for female customers? Check absorption before adding more of the active ingredient. Underperformance is often a sign the body isn't fully utilizing what's already in the formula, not proof that the dose is too low.

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