Clinical Relevance of Gender Women’s Health Research and Health Leadership: Benchmarks of the Continuum

Bringing the appropriate attention to research on women’s health is a process that has evolved in tandem with our understanding and acceptance during the past four decades of women as individuals with rights and roles in soci-ety equal to as well as different from those of men. Thanks to the leadership of many, recent progress has been made in women’s health research. That evolution during the past fifteen years can be characterized by the following concepts: • expanded concepts of women’s health, • policies for and research on sex-gender compari-sons, • addressing health disparities among various popu-lations, • setting research priorities and approaches, and • advancing women’s roles in health research, health policy, and health careers. Each of these benchmarks has influenced the others, but taken individually, they can provide a framework for describing areas of progress