Trends in Gender Representation at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress and the Academic Surgical Congress: A Mixed Picture of Progress

Abstract

There has been increasing attention to gender inequity in speakers at professional meetings. The aim of this study was to evaluate temporal trends in representation of women at the Academic Surgical Congress (ASC) and American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress (CC), 2 prominent general interest, national surgical meetings. We reviewed ASC (2014-2019) and CC (2013-2018) meeting programs to determine counts and proportions of invited panelists and moderators by gender, including the frequency of men-only panels. We conducted trend analyses to assess for temporal change in gender representation and univariate tests of association between different measures of gender representation. The overall proportions of women panelists were 35% (ASC) and 28% (CC). There was a significant increase in the proportion of women panelists over the study period at the CC (23% to 34%, p= 0.007) but not at the ASC (37% to 36%, p= 0.79). The proportion of men-only panels decreased significantly over time at the CC (38% to 23%, p= 0.04), but not at the ASC (23% to 17%, p= 0.50), while the proportion of moderators at the ASC increased significantly (31% to 43%, p= 0.01), but not at the CC (29% to 37%, p= 0.40). Women remain in the minority of panelists and moderators at the ASC and CC meetings, and approximately 1 in 5 panels are composed entirely of men. Although progress has been made at both meetings, ongoing and deliberate attention is needed to ensure continued progress toward the goal of equitable gender representation in academic surgery.