Underrepresentation of Women Participants in Exercise Science and Physiology Research is Associated with Authorship: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The historically low representation of women as participants in exercise science and physiology research has led to a lack of understanding in the response of women to exercise and other therapeutic interventions. We hypothesize (1) the number of women authors and participants will increase over the last 30 years, and (2) a larger representation of women authors will be associated with an increase in the number of women participants. METHODS: Original research articles (n = 971) were analyzed from three journals (Journal of Applied Physiology, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, and British Journal of Sports Medicine) in 1991 and 2021. These journals were chosen based on the following inclusion criteria: consistently ranked in the top 15 exercise science and physiology research journals, impact factor >3.5, ≥50 years of publications, and were accessible online. Articles were chosen from the following inclusion criteria: original research and not a review, included humans and not animals and did not solely use computational models. ANOVA and modified Pearson-Filon (ZPF) were used to statistically analyze the data. Data are reported as mean ± standard deviation. RESULTS: The number (percentage) of women authors was less in 1991 than 2021 (16 ± 22% vs. 31 ± 24%, p < 0.001) as well as the number of women participants (22 ± 32% vs. 36 ± 30%, p < 0.001). The percentage of women participants were less when the last author was a man compared to when the last author was a woman in 1991 (20 ± 30% vs. 34 ± 42%, p = 0.002) and in 2021 (32 ± 28% vs. 52 ± 33%, p < 0.001). Of all studies, 51% were authored by men only in 1991, which declined to 18% in 2021. In contrast, 1.8% in 1991 and 1.1% in 2021 were authored by women only. The correlation between authorship gender (number of women/total authors ratio) and participant gender (number of women/total participants ratio) grew between 1991 and 2021 (r = 0.27 vs. r = 0.42, p = 0.020). CONCLUSION: While the number of women authors and participants increased from 1991 to 2021, these numbers do not represent the current number of women in the population (~51%). Our data shows the historical underrepresentation of woman authors influences the low number of woman participants. Specifically, women authors included participants of both genders (men and women) at equitable numbers in exercise science and physiology research in 2021. The low representation of women as participants in exercise science and physiology research could be resolved by encouraging authors who are men to research equitable numbers of each gender. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.