# females are significantly underrepresented across major sports & exercise medical journals > Original research articles published in three major Sports and Exercise Medicine journals (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, British Journal of Sports Medicine and American Journal of Sports Medicine) over a three-year period were examined.[[(Costello, 2014)#^v67m6]] > Data were extracted from 1382 articles involving a total of 6,076,580 participants. A total of 2,366,968 (39%) participants were female and 3,709,612 (61%) were male. The average percentage of female participants per article across the journals ranged from 35% to 37%. Females were significantly under-represented across all of the journals (χ2 = 23,566, df = 2, p < 0.00001). ↓ this looks at the costello study - not sure where the figures are from > Unfortunately, **it is evident that many researchers have avoided using female participants** with data indicating just 4 to 13% of articles from leading journals in sports and exercise science included only women as partici- pants [15].[[(Elliott-Sale et al., 2021)#^dm4yg]]