Trends in female authorship of spine literature from 2002 to 2022

To characterize the change in first and senior female authors from 2002 to 2022 in prominent spine journals and assess the role of female senior authorship on authorship.

PubMed was queried to identify articles in journals predominantly focused on spine surgery. Articles published between January 2000 to December 2022 from the top fifteen spine journals were queried. Articles involving in vitro data, animal studies, or a primary language other than English were excluded (n = 39,117). Gender API was then used to determine the gender of the first and last author of each article along with its % certainty. Names with below 90% certainty were excluded (n = 4100). Mixed-effects logistic regression model, with journal-level random effects, was estimated to investigate the association between first and senior author genders adjusted.

Overall, 15,415 pairs of names (n = 30,830) were gendered by Gender API with over 90% certainty. Of the 1,697 publications with female senior authors, 18.4% were female first authors. Comparatively, of the 13,718 publications with male senior authors, 10.4% were female first authors. Female first authorship and senior authorship rates both significantly increased between 2000 and 2022, by 6.33% and 3.26% respectively. The increase in the adjusted proportion of female first authors with a female senior author was 1.60% greater than the corresponding increase for female first authors with a male senior author.

First and senior female authorship rates have increased significantly from 2000 to 2022 in prominent spine journals. Further research into the role of training background, level of training, and productivity would characterize possible barriers and opportunities toward gender equity in female spine surgery publication rates.