L. Kuo1, P. Lu1,2, R. Atkinson1, N. L. Cho1, N. Melnitchouk1,2 1Brigham And Women’s Hospital,Department Of Surgery,Boston, MA, USA 2Center for Surgery and Public Health,Brigham And Women’s Hospital,Boston, MA, USA
Introduction:
Gender disparities within academic medicine are well described. Specialty societies provide opportunities for leadership and career advancement, but little is known about the role specialty societies play in propagating or eliminating gender disparities. Previous studies have demonstrated that society awards are less likely to be given to women than men. Here, we examined surgical society award distribution and podium speakership by gender to investigate disparities in recognition and inclusion.
Methods:
National general surgery and associated subspecialty (bariatric, colorectal, endocrine, hepatobiliary, oncologic, pediatric, plastic, thoracic, transplant, and trauma surgery) societies with publicly available information on awards and invited lecturers at annual meetings between 2008-2018 were identified. Awards targeted specifically towards women, military personnel, medical students or non-physicians were excluded. A subset of awards for trainees (fellows or residents) was also identified. The gender of each award winner or invited speaker was determined based on name and internet query. The percentage of female award winners and invited speakers for each society was calculated and compared to the percentage of female practicing and trainee surgeons in 2015 and 2017, respectively, as reported by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Results:
21 surgical societies were identified. From 2008-2018, 1294 awards were given, of which 372 were awarded to women (28.7%). A total of 1026 awards were given to non-trainees. Of these, 239 were given to women (23.3%), which is greater than the 19.2% of practicing surgeons who were female in 2015. Across the 21 societies examined, the percentage of female award recipients by society ranged from 0% to 54%. When examining the 288 awards given to trainees, 49.6% were awarded to women, which is greater than the 38.4% of female residents nationwide in 2017. Rates of female trainee award winners amongst individual societies ranged from 13.3% to 69.2%. Over this same time period, 445 invited speakers were featured at annual meetings. 75 (16.9%) were women, with individual societies featuring female speakers at rates varying from 0% to 25.8%.
Conclusion:
Women are well represented as award winners in surgical societies, both as trainees and as practicing surgeons. However, some individual societies have low rates of female award winners. Women are also underrepresented as invited speakers. Specialty societies should consider interventions to recognize the achievements of female members and to promote parity across genders.