Trends in gender composition on editorial boards in leading medicine, nursing, and pharmacy journals

To investigate the proportions and trends in gender ratios of journal editorial boards in medicine, nursing, and pharmacy from 1995 to 2016.

This was a pooled cross-sectional evaluation of 21 high-impact medical, nursing, and pharmacy journals.

The gender composition of editorial boards for each discipline was obtained. Gender expression was based on the person's name or other information available on the Internet.

The proportion of all editorial board member positions, including editorial leadership positions, occupied by the underrepresented gender, and trends over time were measured.

A total of 5309 editorial board members and 312 editorial leadership positions were identified. From 1995 to 2016, women remained underrepresented across medicine and pharmacy journal editorial boards, whereas men remained underrepresented across nursing journal editorial boards. However, there were statistically significant increases in the representation of the underrepresented gender on editorial boards across all disciplines. Medicine was the only discipline to experience a statistically significant increase in the underrepresented gender of the editorial board being appointed to a leadership position; the proportion of women increased from 3% in 1995 to 35% in 2016.

The gender gap in medicine and pharmacy journals appears to be narrowing. Although men continue to lag behind women in nursing journals, they are and have been overrepresented when considering the proportion of men practicing in the field. Overall, continued efforts are needed to resolve gender inequities in academic health sciences.