The evolving gender distribution in authorship over time in American surgery

Area of Science:

• Medical research
• Surgical literature analysis
• Gender studies in medicine

Background:

• Addressing the need for gender parity in academic surgery.
• Analyzing trends in female authorship within American general surgery publications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the changes in female representation as authors in general surgery literature over two decades.

Main Methods:

• Review of original articles from five major American surgical journals.
• Data collection from three distinct time points: 1997, 2007, and 2017.
• Statistical analysis of the proportion of female first and senior authors.

Main Results:

• Significant increases observed in both female first authorship (15% to 52.7%) and senior authorship (18.7% to 52.6%) from 1997 to 2017 (P < 0.001).
• A notable disparity persists in basic science research publications, with females comprising only 17.4% of authors compared to males (82.6%) (P < 0.001).

Conclusions:

• The academic productivity and representation of female surgeons in general surgery literature have demonstrably increased.
• This upward trend suggests positive progress in achieving gender parity within the field.
• Further efforts may be needed to address the gender gap in basic science research within surgery.