The Issue of Gender Bias Represented in Authorship in the Fields of Exercise and Rehabilitation: A 5-Year Research in Indexed Journals

Abstract

Despite progress made in recent decades, gender bias is still present in scientific publication authorship. The underrepresentation of women and overrepresentation of men has already been reported in the medical fields but little is known in the fields of exercise sciences and rehabilitation. This study examines trends in authorship by gender in this field in the last 5 years. All randomized controlled trials published in indexed journals from April 2017 to March 2022 through the widely inclusive Medline dataset using the MeSH term “exercise therapy” were collected, and the gender of the first and last authors was identified through names, pronouns and photographs. Year of publication, country of affiliation of the first author, and ranking of the journal were also collected. A chi-squared test for trends and logistic regression models were performed to analyze the odds of a woman being a first or last author. The analysis was performed on a total of 5259 articles. Overall, 47% had a woman as the first author and 33% had a woman as the last author, with a similar trend over five years. The trend in women’s authorship varied by geographical area, with the higher representation of women authors in Oceania (first: 53.1%; last: 38.8%), North-Central America (first: 45.3%; last: 37.2%), and Europe (first: 47.2%; last: 33.3%). The logistic regression models (p < 0.001) indicated that women have lower odds of being authors in prominent authorship positions in higher-ranked journals. In conclusion, over the last five years, in the field of exercise and rehabilitation research, women and men are almost equally represented as first authors, in contrast with other medical areas. However, gender bias, unfavoring women, still exists, especially in the last authorship position, regardless of geographical area and journal ranking.

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

“…Among critical care, clinical trials published between 1981 and 2020, 11.8% of the first authors were females [45], while the proportion was 24.6% and 16.6% in the first and last authorship positions among clinical trials published between 2000 and 2022 [46]. Similarly, the proportions of females in the first and last authorship positions were 27.7% and 14.9% among neurovascular clinical trials (2000-2021) [47], 33.3% and 26.4% in rheumatology (2015-2019) [48], 28.4% and 16.8% in sports medicine (2000-2020) [49], 46.6% and 33.4% in exercise/rehabilitation (2014-2022) [50], and 36.2% and 26.9% in dermatology (2010-2020) [51] subdisciplines.…”

“…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].…”

Gender differences, academic patenting, and tenure-track reform in China: Evidence from life sciences at elite universities

“…Gender gaps in the representation of female researchers are reported to be narrowing in various academic fields, particularly in the life sciences and medicine [ 17 ]. However, gender disparities in the quantity and quality of publications and the undertaking of research projects still widely exist [ 18 – 20 ]. Although existing research has examined the relationship between patenting and variables such as gender dominance in certain fields [ 21 ], gender diversity in teams [ 22 ], and gender composition [ 23 ], the gender differences in knowledge transfer and technology commercialization remain understudied.…”