Background: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) notes that 'Accounting for sex and gender in health research has the potential to make health research more just, more rigorous and more useful’. As awareness around equity and justice issues grows, formal sex and gender policies have been established. For example, CIHR-funded researchers must address sex and gender, as appropriate, when designing their research while the American National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines require funded clinical research to examine differential effects of interventions by sex/gender and race/ethnicity.

Objectives: To report on findings from studies evaluating the degree to which systematic reviews have addressed sex and gender. To describe how methods developed by international equity researchers can be used for sex- and gender-based reporting and analyses.

Methods: Recently, teams have published guidance on how to address equity and the social determinants of health in systematic reviews. These methods include logic models, subgroup analyses, and process evaluations; sex and gender considerations are crucial for each of these methods.

Results: Specific methods for including sex and gender considerations in systematic reviews will be presented, with examples from international research reports, national guideline panels, and published reviews.

Conclusions: Sex- and gender-based analyses can help researchers to ensure that: 1)systematic reviews are suitably designed; 2)results from systematic reviews are available for men and women, males and females where appropriate; and 3)that policies and decisions based on systematic review evidence are just and relevant.