Gender disparities among speakers at major spine conferences

To examine 10-year trends in gender representation in speaking roles at major spine conferences.

Medical conferences play an important role in career opportunities. There is little analysis on gender representation of major spine conferences despite several studies demonstrating gender disparities within spine surgery.

Observational study.

A total of 20,181 abstract speakers across 10 years of academic conferences for 6 spine societies.

Percent of female abstract presenters.

We collated the annual meeting programs of six major spine conferences (North American Spine Society (NASS), Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques (IMAST), Global Spine Congress (GSC), American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons (AANS/CNS) Spine Summit, and the Cervical Spine Research Society (CSRS)) dating from 2013 to 2022. Departmental websites, society webpages, or personal social media were identified for images or the use of gendered pronouns in order to determine speaker gender for each speaker type. All categorical variables were compared using Pearson chi-square analysis.

Women constituted 1,816 (9.0%) of all 20,181 identified conference speakers. Female representation was highest at NASS (N=680, 12.2%) but lowest at CSRS (6.6%) and GSC (7.1%). Spine Summit (7.4%), IMAST (9.92%), and GSC (9.87%) demonstrated the largest annual percent increases in female representation. Institutions in Middle East and Africa (1.4%), and Central and South America (1.8%) supported the lowest percent of female speakers. Women were significantly less likely to be speakers or moderators/course faculty than to be podium abstract presenters (p<.001). The percent of women as invited speakers (10.4% vs 5.5%, p=.001) and moderators (11.4% vs 3.7%, p<.001) increased significantly over the study period, with annual increases of 8.8% and 20.8%, respectively, from 2013 to 2022 (p<.001).

While academic spine societies have made significant progress in promoting gender representation, especially among invited speakers and session moderators, women continue to be underrepresented compared to the percent of women in orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery.