T. Lysaght2, M. Wooster1, N. Anton1, D. Stefanidis1 1Indiana University School Of Medicine,Surgery,Indianapolis, IN, USA 2Ohiohealth Grant Medical Center,Trauma And Acute Care Surgery,Columbus, OH, USA
Introduction: Women comprise 19% of all surgeons in the United States, 22% of full time faculty and only 1% of department chairs. Their participation in national meetings as presenters, while unknown, could indicate their engagement in academic surgery. Our objective was to determine the percentage of women presenting at national surgical meetings over time, and the relationship of that percentage with society president gender and meeting focus on gender disparity.
Methods: The annual meeting program of 10 surgical organizations (SO) including Academic Surgical Congress (ASC), American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST), American College of Osteopathic Surgeons Academic Clinical Assembly (ACA), American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress (ACS), the Americas Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association (AHPBA), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Surgical Education Week (SEW), Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST), Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), and Western Trauma Association (WTA), was reviewed for years 2013, 2015, and 2017. The gender of scientific program presenters, panel chairs, session moderators, panelists, and keynote speakers was recorded and its association with the meeting’s president and president-elect gender. Topics pertaining to gender disparities, which addressed the current gender gap in the surgical field or adversities women face with advancing in their field identified by key words gender, female or women in the title, was assessed.
Results: 30.8% (4/13) to 53.8% (7/13) of meetings had women presidents and presidents elect. Women comprised 15.9-45.4% (mean 28.3%, SD+/-9.26%) of presenters across the 10 meetings. The highest rate was observed at the 2017 SEW meeting and the lowest at the 2015 ACA meeting. A statistically significant increase in the number of female participants was found over time in the ACA and ASCO meetings (p=0.0175, p=0.0131). Meetings that incorporated discussions of gender disparities had a higher proportion of women presidents and president elects ranging from 4-10 to those without 1-2, respectively (30.1%-33.2% vs 20.5%-25.4%, respectively). A strong correlation existed between gender of president and president elect and percentage of women presenters (r=0.9108), whereas, a weak correlation was found with discussion of gender disparity (r=0.1714). (Table 1).
Conclusion: While significant variability exists in the academic engagement of women among surgical societies, overall participation is on par or better than their representation among the surgical workforce. Societies with women leaders may be associated with increased women participation at national meetings.
