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Gender and racial diversity in leadership roles within academic surgery internationally: a retrospective
Téa C Sue1, Isabella F Churchill1, Caroline Mallity1
1Department of Undergraduate Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Objective:
Journal editorial and society executive boards have widespread impacts, however, the associated leadership diversity remains underexplored. Our study evaluated such diversity across four surgical specialties before the influences of COVID-19.
Methods:
This retrospective, cross-sectional study obtained perceived gender and race of identified leaders from publicly available websites. Leadership of the top three journals and journal-affiliated societies based on the 2021 Journal Citation Reports journal impact factor was evaluated for subspecialties within neurosurgery, orthopaedic, general, and plastic surgery.
Results:
Leadership diversity within 58 journals and 55 societies were reviewed. Orthopedics had a significantly lower proportion of females (p < 0.05) and intersectional minorities (p < 0.05). Higher journal impact factor and a greater proportion of intersectional minorities were significantly related (p = 0.0009).
Conclusion:
We assessed leadership diversity amongst both journal editorial and society executive boards and identified differences with respect to proportions of females, minorities and intersectional minorities across specialties.
