869 Gender Distribution of Invited Speakers at Major Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery Conferences: A Retrospective Open Cohort Study

Abstract

Abstract Aim Females are disproportionately under-represented in surgery despite the upward trend in women entering the medical profession. Visibility of female surgeons at academic meetings has proven to be an important facet of gender equity. We aim to quantify the proportion of female faculty and prevalence of all-male speaking panels (“manels”) at major T&O surgery meetings. Method We retrospectively analysed four major annual T&O meetings between January 2016 and December 2021. Data was collected on invited lecturers, panelists and chairs/moderators. Male and female faculty were academically stratified according to mean publications, citations, and H-index. A “manel” was defined as a session with 2 or more speakers, all of whom are men. Sex was defined by gender titles used in the conference program, online speaker biography, or the Gender Balance Assessment Tool. Results A total of 968 sessions with 6582 speakers across 18 conferences were identified. The mean percentage of female faculty (invited lecturers, panellists and chairs) was 4.90% (n = 323). Of 775 panel sessions, 568 (73.3%) were manels. No statistically significant difference in the percentage of manels was observed between online (77.8%) versus in-person conferences (72.8%) (p = 0.3195). No statistically significant difference in the proportion of manels was observed over time (from 76.1% in 2016 versus 76.7% in 2021; p = 0.26). Male invited lecturers had a significantly higher H-index than female invited lecturers (p<0.05). Conclusions Manels are highly prevalent in major T&O surgery meetings whilst there is poor representation of female speakers. This study highlights the need for greater gender diversity and female representation in T&O.