Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Jul;43(7):1407-1416.
doi: 10.1111/liv.15585. Epub 2023 Apr 14.

Gender differences of authors of major Hepatology society guidelines during the past 15 years

Xiaowei Tang  1 , Bei Luo  1 , Shu Huang  2 , Jiao Jiang  1 , Yuan Chen  1 , Xiaomin Shi  1 , Wei Zhang  1 , Lei Shi  1 , Xiaolin Zhong  1 , Muhan Lü  1
Affiliations
Review

Gender differences of authors of major Hepatology society guidelines during the past 15 years

Xiaowei Tang et al. Liver Int. 2023 Jul.

Abstract

Background and objective: Recent studies have shown that women are underrepresented as authors of medical research and clinical practice guidelines. This study aimed to evaluate gender disparities of authors of major hepatology guidelines.

Methods: We reviewed the hepatology guidelines published by the following major gastroenterology societies from January 2008 to September 2022: the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), Asian-Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL), British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG), European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) and Korean Association for the Study of the Liver (KASL). We determined the topic and the gender of all authors of each guideline. The numbers of men authors, women authors and total authors were collected. The trends of women first authors, women senior authors and total women authors were assessed. A logistic regression analysis was performed to analyse the relationship between the gender of the first or senior author and related factors.

Results: We identified 103 hepatology guidelines published between January 2008 and September 2022 published by the AGA, ACG, AASLD, APASL, BSG, EASL, and KASL. The gender of 1096 of 1100 (99.6%) authors was determined. Therefore, a total of 1096 authors were included: 223 (20.3%) authors were women and 873 (79.7%) authors were men. Women comprised 14.6% of all first authors, and 20.4% of all senior authors were women. Only the AASLD had writing committees comprising more than 30% total women authors. The proportions of women senior authors and total women authors increased significantly during the study period (p < .05). Women first authors and women senior authors were more likely to publish guidelines with more women authors. Women first authors were less likely to be co-authors with men authors.

Conclusions: Over the course of the past decade, the proportion of women authors of major hepatology guidelines has been low; however, this gender gap appears to be closing.

Keywords: authorship; disparity; gender.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

REFERENCES

    1. Association of American Medical Colleges. Gender equity in academic medicine. 2020. https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/gender-equity-academic-medicine.
    1. Webb J, Cambron J, Xu KT, Simmons M, Richman P. First and last authorship by gender in emergency medicine publications-a comparison of 2008 vs. 2018. Am J Emerg Med. 2021;46:445-448.
    1. Jagsi R, Guancial EA, Worobey CC, et al. The “gender gap” in authorship of academic medical literature-a 35-year perspective. N Engl J Med. 2006;355(3):281-287.
    1. Long MT, Leszczynski A, Thompson KD, Wasan SK, Calderwood AH. Female authorship in major academic gastroenterology journals: a look over 20 years. Gastrointest Endosc. 2015;81(6):1440-1447.e3.
    1. Wang F, Cheng T, Ricci JA. Gender authorship trends among craniofacial publications: a 20-year analysis. Cleft Palate Craniofac J. 2022;25:10556656221102040.

LinkOut - more resources