Where Are the Women in Basic Science Research? Gender Trends in Abstracts Presented at the Academic Surgical Congress

Over the past decade, the number of women in surgery has increased. We aimed to assess whether these gender trends were similarly reflected across all types of surgical research.

We reviewed abstracts accepted for oral presentations at the Academic Surgical Congress from 2015 to 2025 and compared differences in senior authors' gender across basic/translational, clinical/outcomes, and education research. Our primary outcome was female representation across research types. Our secondary outcome was female representation over time.

A total of 2504 abstracts were included in our analysis. Women comprised about 24% of all senior authors and increased from 20% in 2015 to 36% in 2025; however, this change was not uniform across surgical research types. Women were underrepresented in basic/translational science (18.2%) compared to clinical/outcomes (24.1%) and education research (41.9%; P < 0.001). Compared to men, women were significantly more likely to author clinical/outcomes (odds ratio: 1.38, 95% confidence interval: 1.08-1.78, P = 0.012) and education abstracts (odds ratio: 2.99, 95% confidence interval: 2.07-4.33) than basic/translational science abstracts. Women senior authors were younger in academic age than men (median years since graduation: 18.0 versus 21.3, P < 0.001). After adjusting for authors' academic age, women remained significantly less likely to author abstracts in basic/translational science than education. Women were also less likely to have abstracts in more than one category of research or to have multiple abstracts presented.

There is a relative paucity of women senior authors compared to men, especially in basic/translational science research. Future studies are needed to better understand and address the causes of this disparity.