Persistent Gender Disparity in Authorship of Arthroscopic Surgery Research

To examine how the gender of the first and last authors of annual meeting abstracts and journal articles from a related source have changed between 2012 and 2022.

All abstracts and original research articles published from 2012 to 2022 were extracted from the websites of The Arthroscopy Association of North America and Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery, respectively. The full names of first and last authors were analyzed with the validated Genderize algorithm. Analyses were performed to evaluate authorship of abstracts and articles.

Of 850 abstracts, 845 (99.4%) had an identifiable first-author gender and 843 (99.2%) had an identifiable last-author gender. The proportion of female first authors increased from 9.2% in 2012 to 15.2% in 2022, whereas the proportion of female last authors decreased from 13.5% in 2012 to 12.3% in 2022. Of 4,811 articles, 4,744 (98.6%) had an identifiable first author gender and 4,767 (99.1%) had an identifiable last author gender. The proportion of female first authors increased from 10.4% in 2012 to 16.8% in 2022, whereas the proportion of female last authors decreased from 19.0% in 2012 to 9.1% in 2022. For both abstracts and articles, the gender of the last author was not significantly associated with the presence of a female first author.

Between 2021 and 2022, there was a significant increase in the proportion of female first authors of both abstracts and articles examined in this study. However, a similar increase was not seen among last authors.

It is important to examine gender representation among authors who publish arthroscopic research to understand how a greater balance may be achieved.