Gender disparity in medicine and where are we now in emergency medicine?

Abstract

Background: Studies show that although the presence of women in the medical field has risen, there is a lesser representation of women within editorial boards of journals. Studies on this subject have mostly been carried out related to the medical field of the researcher. It is not known what position the emergency medicine department is in this regard compared to other departments. We aimed to investigate whether gender disparity exists within the editors and editorial board members of medical journals, especially in those related to emergency medicine.

Methods: In the present cross-sectional study, we searched medical journals using the Scimago Journal/Country Rank journal system for comparison. The websites of the journals included in the study were searched, and gender data of the editor and editorial board, associate editors, consultant editors, and section editors for each journal were obtained.

Results: The total number of journals examined in this study was 276. The median percentage of female editorial board members (20.8%; 50-100) was lower in emergency medicine journals compared to other branches of medicine (31%; 0-100) (p < .001). The median percentage of female editorial board members and editors was also lower in the emergency medicine field (20.6%; 0-50) (p < .001) than in other branches of medicine. The percentage of female editorial board members of emergency medicine journals was 19.5% with the third-lowest ranking among 26 branches. When both the editors and editorial board members were considered, the highest female percentage was found in pediatrics (50.7%) followed by geriatric medicine (43.4%).

Conclusion: There is a significant gender disparity within editors and editorial board members in emergency medicine journals. The proportion of women within the editorial board was found to be lower in emergency medicine journals among all the journals included in the study.

Keywords: Editorial; Emergency medicine; Female; Male; Medicine.