PAVING A PATH TO GENDER PARITY: RECENT TRENDS IN PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN AN ACADEMIC SURGERY SOCIETY
Jenny H. Chang*1, Varisha Essani3, Sara Maskal1, Mir Shanaz Hossain1, Nicole E. Brooks1, Ajita Prabhu1, Sharon Lum2, R Matthew Walsh1
1Surgery, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH; 2Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA; 3Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
Introduction: The proportion of women surgeons is steadily increasing, although the number of women in surgical leadership and research has not. The Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract (SSAT), a global association of academic gastrointestinal surgeons, pledged its commitment to diversity and inclusion with the creation of a task force and diversity symposium in 2016. Our study sought to evaluate the temporal trend of gender representation in leadership and research presented at SSAT.
Methods: Publicly available SSAT meeting programs from 2010-2022 were reviewed to assess gender proportions within leadership positions (officers and committee chairs), invited speakerships moderators and speakers, clinical symposium moderators and speakers, committee panel session moderators and speakers, and contributions to scientific sessions (moderator, first author and senior author). Verified individual professional profiles (eg, LinkedIn, Doximity, affiliate institution websites) were analyzed to categorize gender as women, men, or not available. Identification of sex was deferred. Descriptive and trend analyses using linear regression and chi-squared testing were performed.
Results: A total of 5,493 individuals were reviewed, of which 1,182 (21.5%) were identified as women and 4,113 (74.7%) as men. 209 (3.8%) did not have an available gender profile. The trend in total women participation is demonstrated in Figure 1 with an increase of 1.04% per year (R2=0.81), comparable to published US trend on active women surgeons. There was a statistically significant difference in the total proportion of women engagement before and after the task force creation in 2016 (18.6% vs 27.1%, p<0.0001), although the increase was 1.93% per year (R2=0.96) prior to 2016 compared to 1.15% (R2=0.64) after. When analyzed by category, annual increases in the proportion of women were demonstrated in: leadership (2.22%, R2=0.50), invited speakerships (2.11%, R2=0.46), invited speakerships moderators (1.35%, R2=0.16 ), clinical symposium moderator (1.25%, R2=0.37), clinical symposium speaker (2.09%, R2=0.63), committee panel session moderator (2.81%, R2=0.25), scientific session moderators (1.06%, R2=0.25), There was no increase seen in committee panel session speakers (0.51%, R2=0.01). 1,595 abstracts were reviewed, with an increase in proportion of first author (1.18%, R2=0.42), but no change in the proportion of women senior author (0.02%, R2=0.00).
Conclusion: There has been an encouraging upward trajectory in women participation at SSAT over the past 13 years. However, if persistent at the current trend, gender parity will not be attained until 2044. Active promotion of gender diversity through creation of a task force or annual diversity symposium, as modeled by SSAT, is an effective tool to improve gender parity, but substantial opportunity for improvement remains.
Trend in total participation of women and non-women (men and not avaliable) at SSAT as well as Association of American Medical College (AAMC) national data on proportion of active surgeons who are women.
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