A Public Dataset for Analyzing Gender Disparities in Infectious Disease Clinical Trials (1994–2022)

Gender disparities in clinical trial enrollment persist as a critical barrier to equitable healthcare, undermining the validity of therapeutic guidelines and perpetuating sex-specific gaps in drug safety and efficacy data. This paper presents a systematically curated dataset documenting female participation rates in 67 phase III/IV clinical trials for five globally significant infectious diseases—COVID-19, Ebola, HIV, Zika, and Mpox—conducted between 1994 and 2022. The dataset provides standardized enrollment metrics, eligibility criteria, and geographic distributions to enable systematic investigations into structural recruitment biases. Data were systematically identified through PRISMA-compliant searches of major clinical trial registries (ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO-ICTRP, ISRCTN, EudraCT), extracted using standardized protocols with dual independent review, and rigorously validated through cross-source verification. Hosted on Figshare with persistent DOIs and comprehensive metadata, this FAIR-compliant resource includes preprocessing scripts, a Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework, and visualization tools to support meta-analyses of enrollment trends, policy evaluations, and benchmarking of diversity initiatives. With inter-rater reliability κ = 0.91 and 96.8% data completeness, this dataset empowers researchers to quantify systemic inequities and advance evidence-based reforms in global health research.