Whose Voices Are Heard? Speaker Gender Representation at the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting

• Published in: Journal of cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesia Vol. 34; no. 7; pp. 1805 - 1809
• Main Authors: Shillcutt, Sasha K., Lorenzen, Kristi A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.07.2020
• Subjects: Anesthesiologists; Association of American Medical Colleges; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; gender; Humans; Male; Physicians, Women; representation; Societies, Medical; Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists; women; Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists; Association of American Medical Colleges; gender; representation; women
• ISSN: 1053-0770; 1532-8422
• DOI: 10.1053/j.jvca.2020.01.046

Gender disparities in academic medicine continue to be prevalent despite significant advances in the number of women entering medicine over the last decades. The purpose of the present study was to investigate gender representation of speakers at Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) Annual Scientific Sessions meetings from 2015 to 2018. Observational study. Internet analysis and cross-sectional survey. Speakers at the SCA Annual Scientific Sessions meetings from 2015 to 2018. Individual speakers in the main program, problem-based learning discussions, workshops, and fellow sessions were analyzed for speaker gender. Speakers’ names, pronouns, institutional biographies, and accompanying images were matched with public online data and were used to identify gender. Gender data from the 2019 SCA Diversity Survey respondents were used to estimate gender of the SCA membership. Between 2015 and 2018, the number of lectures given by women was 22% to 25%. A statistically significant difference was found in the expected versus observed proportion of women in speaking slots for all combined sessions (2015-2018; p = 0.0027, 0.0023, 0.0018, 0.025, respectively). There also was a statistically significant difference in the expected versus observed proportion of women in speaking slots in the main sessions (2015-2018; p ≤ 0.0001, 0.00069, 0.00019, 0.00019, respectively). For the workshops, problem-based learning discussions, and fellow sessions, no statistically significant difference was found in the observed versus expected proportion of women in speaker slots. Between 2015 and 2018, the majority of lectures at the SCA annual meetings were given by men, with women consistently giving 22% to 25% of individual lectures. When all sessions were combined, there was a statistically significant difference in the expected versus observed proportion of women in speaking slots.