Exploring gender disparities in first authorship in anatomy during last two decades

In scientific literature, authorship serves as a vital form of symbolic capital, with first authorship especially signifying active research involvement. This study examines the presence and magnitude of the gender gap in Anatomy research authorship and tracks its progression over the past twenty years in five esteemed journals. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the trend of female first authorship within the subject.

PubMed search for all the published articles in five reputed Anatomical journals (2004-2023) was performed to get the bibliographic details of each article. Rentrez package was used to retrieve full name and affiliation. The first authors from the Department of Anatomy, Morphology, Embryology and Histology were included. Gender of the first author was assessed using Namsor API. The proportions of female first authors were presented as percentage stratified year-wise and geographically. A Mann-Kendall trend test statistics was applied to observe the significance of trends.

One third of publications were by female first authors in Anatomy in last two decades. Continent wise, Africa and North America had the highest and lowest female representation. Participation of female as first authors was relatively consistent across journals (31.6 -34.8%). Though trend for female first authors increased in 2023 (38.8%) as compare to in 2004 (28.9%), however Mann-Kendall trend test statistics indicate no significant increase in yearly trend (p = 0.552) during last twenty years.

Globally males continue to dominate the prestigious first authorship in Anatomy except in India and Italy. Future research is needed to fully understand the obstacles preventing female representation as first authors in different geographic areas in this discipline.