Endourology Fellowship: More Than a Stone's Throw Away for Women

To characterize the trends in female representation in the endourology fellowship match compared with the urology residency match. Available deidentified match data from 2017 to 2022 was obtained from the American Urological Association and Endourology Society annual census data. We evaluated gender-specific participation in the urology residency and endourology fellowship match and compared differences in the trends over the last 6 years. Between the years 2017 and 2021, there were a total of 313 applicants for a fellowship in endourology, and of those, only 8.6% were women. In that same time period, a significantly larger number of women (27.1%) participated in the urology residency match (p = 0.0002). When specifically examining the endourology applicant trend, there is no significant increase in participation (R = 0.7, p = 0.35) between 2017 and 2021, as compared with the significant increase in total number of applicants (R = 7.1, p = 0.04). However, in the urology match, there has been a constant and significant increase in both female (R = 13.7, p = 0.03) and total applicants (R = 27, p = 0.04) between 2017 and 2022. Although there has been an overall increase in the number of applicants to urology, the number of women in endourology fellowship has not increased at a commensurate rate. In light of these findings, it is the responsibility of the endourology community to identify social and systemic barriers for women in this field and advocate for change.