Gender Distribution & Rank of Authorship in Surgical Literature

Authors

Sruthi Selvakumar, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
Israel Zagales, Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE)
Kevin Newsome, Florida International University
Jeffrey Spardy, Florida International University
Radleigh Santos, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
Dessy Boneva, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
Deborah M. Stein, University of Maryland
Lucy Kornblith, San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; University of San Francisco
Tracy Bilski, Orlando Regional Medical Center
Adel Elkbuli, Orlando Regional Medical Center

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-17-2022

Publication Title

The American Surgeon

Keywords

academic medicine, authorship, gender disparities, gender equity, surgical research

ISSN

1555-9823

Abstract

Background

Authorship of surgical literature is important for the career advancement of surgeons, and gender disparities in authorship may hinder the representation and leadership of women within academic surgery. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the gender distribution of first, senior, and overall authorship in peer-reviewed surgical journal studies across all surgical specialties to determine if disparities exist.

Methods

PubMed, EMBASE, and Google Scholar databases were searched for studies investigating the gender distribution of authorship of surgical literature published before December 10th, 2021. Meta-analysis was performed and Cohen’s Q test for heterogenous effects was used to determine whether random or fixed-effects models were appropriate.

Results

Fifteen studies investigating gender distribution of authorship met inclusion, which included a total of 136,627 pooled studies. The meta-analysis demonstrated the meta-proportion of first authorship for women to be 20.6% (95% CI: 13.9, 28.2), the meta-proportion of senior authorship for women to be 11.9% (95% CI: 6.6, 18.5), and the meta-proportion of overall authorship for women to be 23% (95% CI: 16.2, 30.7). In addition, the proportion of senior authorship for women was found to be significantly lower than the proportion of overall authorship for women (11.9% versus 23.0%, P = .0106).

Conclusion

There is a significantly smaller proportion of women who are first, senior, and overall authors in surgical literature compared to their colleagues who are men. Sustainable and effective solutions aimed at improving the representation of women surgeons in surgical research and research leadership are necessary.

NSUWorks Citation

Selvakumar, Sruthi; Zagales, Israel; Newsome, Kevin; Spardy, Jeffrey; Santos, Radleigh; Boneva, Dessy; Stein, Deborah M.; Kornblith, Lucy; Bilski, Tracy; and Elkbuli, Adel, "Gender Distribution & Rank of Authorship in Surgical Literature" (2022). Mathematics Faculty Articles. 349.
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/math_facarticles/349

ORCID ID

0000-0002-8194-5502

DOI

10.1177/00031348221121536