The Matilda effect: Under-representation of women in hematology and oncology awards.

Abstract

11012 Background: The proportion of women in the field of hematology and oncology (H&O) has increased over recent decades, but representation by women in leadership positions remains a challenge. Our aim was to examine representation of winners of recognition awards by gender and race from the major international hematology and oncology societies. Methods: Published award recipients from the seven major H&O societies were reviewed, with 26 years of data included (1994-2019). Awardee demographics and academic rank were collected and included in the analysis. Gender was determined based on awardee full name and verified by public data. Chi-square and Cochran-Armitage tests were used to analyze the data. Results: Over the past 26 years, 942 awards were presented at the 7 major H&O societies. We excluded 27 gender specific awards from the analysis. Of the 915 awardees included in analysis, award recipients were overwhelmingly men (77.9%) and non-Hispanic white (84.7%). Gender breakdown by society is described in table. ESMO and ASTRO represented the lowest distribution of women at 9.1% and 11.1%, respectively. Women awardees received 30.3% of the awards categorized as humanistic and education-related, while only receiving 16.0% of awards in the basic sciences category (p<0.01). The Cochran-Armitage test demonstrated an upward trend in the number of women awardees, from 10% between 1994-1998 to 25.6% between 2014-2019 (p=0.0004). Over the past five years, the average proportion of women medical oncologists was 35.6% per the AAMC. In this time period, women oncologists have received only 24.0% of all awards, suggesting the awardees included in the study period do not represent the proportion women in the field (p=0.00424). Black, Hispanic, and Asian awardees represented 3.7%, 3.3%, and 6.8% of the total awardees, respectively. Of the 64 Black and Hispanic awardees, 60.9% of the awards were for investigating healthcare disparities and only 4.6% were given for basic science research. Conclusions: During our study period, women physicians and investigators were less likely to receive recognition awards from the seven major H&O societies compared to men. We also observed a considerable low proportion of minority awardees in all oncology subspecialties. While the proportion of women awardees has increased over time, significant underrepresentation remains. [Table: see text]