Evidence Hub

Gender distribution in board memberships of emergency medicine societies

Lindner G, Rupp A, Exadaktylos AK, Ravioli S

The American journal of emergency medicine, 2021

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Gender gaps have been described regarding the chairpersons in academic emergency departments, the composition of editorial boards and publications in emergency medicine. The objective of this study was to determine the gender distribution of chairpersons and board members of emergency medicine societies worldwide.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this cross-sectional analysis, websites of national emergency medicine societies worldwide were screened for the composition of executive boards and the respective chairpersons. The gender of the board members and chairpersons was obtained either by the profile on the respective web site and/or by internet search and gender identification software. Descriptive statistics were performed and results for national societies were stratified by continent.

RESULTS: A total of 61 boards of national emergency medicine societies were analyzed. Detailed information on the board composition was available for 50 societies, of which 27 were from Europe, 10 from Asia, five from Africa, four from North America, three from South America and one from Australasia. A total of 603 persons were included in the analysis. 45 (82%) of the listed societies' presidents were male, while 10 (18%) were female. 385 (70%) of the non-president board members were male. The highest proportion of female board members was seen in Australia/New Zealand with five out of eight persons (62%) followed by South America with 13 out of 29 (45%).

CONCLUSIONS: A marked…

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a cross-sectional, done in people. Its evidence level is 4 of 5 (Low · observational). Observational designs can show an association but not prove cause.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free