Gender disparities in award recipients from surgical specialty societies

Women are underrepresented as recognition award recipients across several medical specialties. This phenomenon has not been investigated in surgery. This study investigates the prevalence of female award recipients among the major American surgical societies.

Publicly available lists of surgical society award recipients from 1998 to 2017 were analyzed. Awards intended primarily for physicians presented a minimum of five times were included. The primary outcome was the percentage of award recipients who were female. Trainee-specific and nontrainee-specific percentages of female award winners were compared with national percentages of female surgeons. Analysis was performed for awards based on the type of award (achievement, research, and service). Society-specific analyses were performed.

Of the 1,222 awards presented by 20 societies studied, 420 (25.6%) were awarded to women. A total of 37.7% of trainee-specific awards and 20.6% of nontrainee-specific awards were presented to women. Women received 12.9% of achievement, 29.9% of research, and 24.0% of service awards. Society-specific rates of female award recipients ranged from 5.3% to 50.0%.

Overall, female trainees are proportionately represented as winners of awards from surgical societies, but nontrainees receive a disproportionately higher percentage of awards as compared with the national rates of female surgeons. However, there is significant variation among societies. Further research is warranted to elucidate why this variation exists and what can be done to remedy it.