Underrepresentation of Women Among Authors of Invited Commentaries in Medical Journals—Where Are the Female Editorialists?

Abstract: To the growing list of gender-based disparities faced by women in academic medicine, we can add 1 more: on average, across thousands of medical journals, women with comparable credentials and experience are less likely than men to author invited commentary articles (ie, editorials). Smaller studies, limited to specific disciplines, suggested this was the case but did not account for factors that are likely to be associated with invitations to write editorials, such as publication history. Thomas and colleagues reported on their examination of 72 038 medical journal commentary articles published from 2013 to 2017. The researchers used validated methods to infer author gender and matched commentary authors to controls on characteristics likely to be associated with invitations, including field of expertise, seniority, number of publications, and citation record. Adjustment for these confounders attenuated but did not eliminate the substantial differences in favor of men. Surprisingly, the magnitude of the disadvantage was larger for senior women. Overall, the odds of authoring an editorial were 21% lower for women compared with men. However, for the most senior women, the odds of authoring an editorial were 31% lower than for men with comparable credentials.