Gender Representation Among Foot and Ankle Conference Presenters and Research Authors: A 10-year Analysis (2012 to 2022).

BACKGROUND

Today women are more than 50% of medical school matriculants but remain underrepresented in orthopaedic surgery. Moreover, the rate of female orthopaedic subspecialty society membership and representation among meeting speakers is believed to be low. The objective of this study was to assess whether a gap exists in female representation among invited speakers at American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society (AOFAS) national meetings relative to research productivity, as reflected by authorship in Foot and Ankle International (FAI).

METHODS

Programs for AOFAS national meetings and FAI articles between January 2012 and December 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. Sex was identified through personal acquaintance or online biographies. Presentations and articles were categorized as "technical" or "nontechnical," where technical was defined as relating to preclinical or clinical practice. The chi-square test was used for comparisons ( P < 0.05).

RESULTS

One thousand twenty AOFAS talks and 2,230 FAI articles were analyzed. 11.08% of AOFAS invited speakers, 15.16% of FAI first authors, and 7.40% of FAI senior authors were women. In 2018 and 2019, women were more likely to give "nontechnical" AOFAS presentations ( P = 0.003). The average annual trend was +2.00% female AOFAS presenters and +0.31% FAI female first authors per year. FAI female senior authorship had an average annual decrease of -0.37%.

DISCUSSION: Women represented 15.16% of first authors in FAI between 2012 and 2022 and 11.08% of invited speakers at AOFAS meetings. Meanwhile, the percentage of women in AOFAS increased from 7.5% to 13%. Although female foot and ankle surgeons have been historically underrepresented in the field, they were proportionally represented in 2021 and 2022 among invited national conference presentations and first author research compared with society membership. There remains room to increase representation of deserving groups; however, the proportion of female AOFAS presenters demonstrates a positive trend.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III.