Abstract 9931: Women Representation in Authorship of European Society of Cardiology Guidelines: Temporal Trends and a Geographic Perspective

Abstract

Introduction: Diversity of authors of the international Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) will ensure raising broader concerns and contributing different perspectives. There is lack of data regarding gender and global distribution of authors of cardiovascular CPG. Purpose: To assess gender and geographic distribution of authors of ESC CPG and compare these over the contemporary years (2015 - 2021) vs earlier years (prior to 2015). Methods: ESC website was searched to include CPG. Sex and affiliating country of authors were determined by searching ESC 365 platform, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn platforms, social media or author’s affiliating institution website. Results: Thirty-eight documents were analyzed (26 contemporary documents vs 12 earlier documents). The documents included 28 CPG and 10 non-CPG documents (i.e., position papers, expert consensus, scientific statements, or task force reports). Total number of authors =748, 18.85% were women (21.84% in contemporary documents vs 8.02% in earlier documents, p<0.001). Total number of chair/co-chair position was 67, 10.44% were women (11.32% in contemporary vs 7.14% in earlier documents, p<0.001). Lowest proportion of women authors was in interventional cardiology CPG (13.3%) while highest proportion was in pediatric cardiology CPG (37.5%). Highest proportion of total authors (regardless gender) was from UK, Italy and Germany in 11.9%, 11.1%, and 10.3% respectively. Highest number of women authors were from UK, Netherlands and Italy in 15.5%, 12.7% and 11.3% respectively. Highest percentage of women authors among total authors from each specific country were from Austria 46.7%, Netherlands 37.5% and Sweden 35.1% Conclusion: Despite trends showing an overall increase in female authorship over years, there still remain gender and geographic disparities in writing committee/ task force shares, indicating potential for enhanced efforts to improve diversity within professional societies.