Female Representation at High-profile Urology Conferences, 2014-2019: A Leadership Metric

To measure female leadership through speakership at urology conferences and compare involvement to the overall representation of women in the urologic workforce.

A cross-sectional analysis was conducted to identify the gender of conference speakers from 2014 to 2019. Six high-profile urology conferences were selected: AUA; SUFU; SPU; SUO; GURS; WCE. Using programming published by each society, the number of invited female speakers at each conference was recorded. Comparisons were made to the proportion of practicing female urologists based on AUA census data.

A total of 34 conferences were reviewed. From 2014 to 2019, the percentage of female representation increased from 13.7% to 19.3% (P < .05). The proportion of female speakers at all conferences ranged from 0% to 35.6%. The average absolute increase was 1.3% each year. Female representation at urology conferences in 2019 was significantly greater than female representation in the field (19.3% vs 9.9%, P < .05).

There is a slight trend of increasing proportion of invited female speakers at academic urology conferences from 2014 to 2019. Although the proportion of women in urology remains low, the trend indicates that the mean proportion of female speakers is higher than the proportion of women in the field. Inclusion of female conference speakers presents an opportunity for increased gender parity within urology leadership.