Gender differences in first authorship of randomized controlled trials from India
Bharat Rawlley1, Afzal Parvez Khan2, Shrey Chopra2
1Department of Internal Medicine, State University of New York Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, United States of America.
Background:
It has been established that identity of the trial leadership plays a role in the conduct of the trial. An estimation of the gender composition of RCT leadership in India has not been undertaken. We performed this study to quantify the gender composition of first authors of RCTs published from India for the years 2011 to 2020.
Methods:
PubMed database was searched using the keyword "randomized controlled trial". We included studies that were classified as a RCT, had a first author affiliation that belonged to India and were published online between 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2020. The gender of the first authors was determined using Gender-API and manually.
Results:
Out of the total 4136 RCTs included in our study, the gender of 4056 (98%) first authors were identified. Of the 4056 first authors, 1198 (30%) were women and 2858 (70%) were men. The mean (SD) percentage of yearly distribution of women and men as first authors was 29.53(2.23) and 70.46(2.23), respectively. We did not find any significant change in gender distribution of first authors over the course of ten years [P = 0.78].
Conclusion:
The persistence of gender disparity in the leadership of RCTs from India demands greater efforts towards inclusion of women as leaders of clinical trials.
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