Gender differences of authors of major Hepatology society guidelines during the past 15 years

Abstract

Background and Objective: Recent studies have shown that women are underrepresented as authors of medical research and clinical practice guidelines. This study aimed to evaluate gender disparities of authors of major hepatology guidelines. Methods: We reviewed the hepatology guidelines published by the following major gastroenterology societies from January 2008 to September 2022: the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), Asian-Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL), British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG), European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) and Korean Association for the Study of the Liver (KASL). We determined the topic and the gender of all authors of each guideline.

CPG publishing: ‘Man’‐uscripts reign supreme

“…Previous reports have shown that women senior authors are more likely than men to be associated with women first authors. 16,17 This association was not observed in the study by Tang et al, 15 who instead show that while women senior authors are more likely to work with more women authors in general, the gender of the senior author was not associated with that of the first author, the total number of authors, nor with the number of men authors. Strikingly, between 2009 and 2014, not a single CPG was published with a woman as the first author, and in the three following years, there were only 3 CPGs with a woman as the first author of 25 published CPGs.…”

“…The societies also strive to foster the next generations of clinicians and scientists. The proportions of women authors of society-issued CPGs increased significantly during recent years, 15 but several societies had no women first authors, and authorship representation was not proportional to society gender demographics. A true meritocracy is only possible without bias, and science and medicine would thus both be well-served by eliminating gender bias.…”

“…This could perhaps be related to sub-specialty, since all CPGs within the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, intrahepatic cholestatic liver disease or liver failure had men as the first authors (a total of 27 guidelines). 15 These data suggest that although established women in the field are included in CPG writing, younger women colleagues are not included to the same degree.…”

“…14 As such, CPGs are a powerful tool with which societies can both influence medical practice and determine which members of their societies are selected to contribute to CPGs as authors. In this issue, Tang and colleagues investigate authorship gender patterns in CPGs issued by major gastroenterological societies over the past 15 years, 15 to determine whether women are under-represented as authors. September 2022.…”

A Systematic Review of Gender Disparity in the Authorship of Clinical Trials and Clinical Practice Guidelines in Various Medicine Subspecialties

“…Of the included studies, one reported authorship trends in both clinical trials and clinical practice guidelines [39], while more than 15 studies exclusively reported authorship trends in clinical trials [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] and 14 reported authorship trends in clinical practice guidelines [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67].…”