Women in Homeopathy.

Abstract

As stated on our publisher’swebsite, “Morewomen than ever before are choosing to pursue careers in both medicine and medical research; however, a gender gap still exists. According to the UN, women make up 70% of health and social care workers, but only 37% of first authors on medical research articles. At Thieme, we believe the key to closing the gender gap in medicine is to uplift women’s voices”.1 Thieme has therefore created its Women in Medicine collection, “which aims to highlight and celebrate the work and contributions to medicine by female-identifying people from around the world”. Our journal is supporting this important project through its connected Women in Homeopathy collection, available to view via the Authors tab on the homepage. Akin to the format of a Virtual Special Issue, its content is articles published in Homeopathy from 2022 onward that have prominently female authorship. We hope that the new online collection adds encouragement to women to continue in homeopathy research and to submit ever more work to the journal. The contribution by women has been a stand-out feature of Homeopathy for many years, and female authorship is again well represented in this current issue of the journal. Each of the first two papers is a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in humans, on the novel topics of ringworm and hyperuricemia, with inconclusive and positive findings respectively.2,3 An international survey on the uptake and prevalence of the use of repertory software among homeopathy practitioners is the topic of our third article.4 The ever-eclectic nature of homeopathy research is reflected in the remaining papers: an RCT on homeopathic products as a complementary dietary additive for pigs5; an in-vitro experiment on the antimicrobial activity of dynamised essential oil of the medicinal plant Aloysia polystachya6; and the laboratory development of a method to immobilise solvatochromic dyes on cellulose films that will refine the investigation of dye–potency interactions.7 The issue is suitably completed by a clinical case report, from an allfemale group of authors, detailing the effective use of homeopathy to treat a woman with multiple chronic conditions.8