The Issue of Gender Bias Represented in Authorship in the Fields of Exercise and Rehabilitation: A 5-Year Research in Indexed Journals

Abstract

Despite progress made in recent decades, gender bias is still present in scientific publication authorship. The underrepresentation of women and overrepresentation of men has already been reported in the medical fields but little is known in the fields of exercise sciences and rehabilitation. This study examines trends in authorship by gender in this field in the last 5 years. All randomized controlled trials published in indexed journals from April 2017 to March 2022 through the widely inclusive Medline dataset using the MeSH term "exercise therapy" were collected, and the gender of the first and last authors was identified through names, pronouns and photographs. Year of publication, country of affiliation of the first author, and ranking of the journal were also collected. A chi-squared test for trends and logistic regression models were performed to analyze the odds of a woman being a first or last author. The analysis was performed on a total of 5259 articles. Overall, 47% had a woman as the first author and 33% had a woman as the last author, with a similar trend over five years. The trend in women's authorship varied by geographical area, with the higher representation of women authors in Oceania (first: 53.1%; last: 38.8%), North-Central America (first: 45.3%; last: 37.2%), and Europe (first: 47.2%; last: 33.3%). The logistic regression models (p < 0.001) indicated that women have lower odds of being authors in prominent authorship positions in higher-ranked journals. In conclusion, over the last five years, in the field of exercise and rehabilitation research, women and men are almost equally represented as first authors, in contrast with other medical areas. However, gender bias, unfavoring women, still exists, especially in the last authorship position, regardless of geographical area and journal ranking.

Keywords: authorship position; exercise; exercise therapy; gender; gender bias; journal ranking; rehabilitation.

Figure 1

Flowchart of the study.

Figure 2

Absolute and relative frequencies of women and men as first (A) and last (B) authors from April 2017 to March 2022.

Figure 3

World map representing the percentage of women as last authors across the continents. Blue denotes the lower representation of women, and pink indicates the higher representation of women.

Figure 4

Forest plot representing the odds of being a female first (blue squares) or last (red dots) author. Values represent the odds ratio for females of being first or last author with respective 95% CIs. Asterisks represent significant odds according to multiple logistic regression models.