Gender Authorship Trends of Plastic Surgery Research in the United States

An increasing number of women are entering the medical profession, but plastic surgery remains a male-dominated profession, especially within academia. As academic aspirations and advancement depend largely on research productivity, the authors assessed the number of articles authored by women published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Original articles in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery published during the years 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2004, and 2014 were analyzed. First and senior authors with an M.D. degree and U.S. institutional affiliation were categorized by gender. Authorship trends were compared with those from other specialties. Findings were placed in the context of gender trends among plastic surgery residents in the United States.

The percentage of female authors in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery increased from 2.4 percent in 1970 to 13.3 percent in 2014. Over the same time period, the percentage of female plastic surgery residents increased from 2.6 percent to 32.5 percent. By 2014, there were more female first authors (19.1 percent) than senior authors (7.7 percent) (p < 0.001). As a field, plastic surgery had fewer female authors than other medical specialties including pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery, internal medicine, and radiation oncology (p < 0.05).

The increase in representation of female authors in plastic surgery is encouraging but lags behind advances in other specialties. Understanding reasons for these trends may help improve gender equity in academic plastic surgery.