Academic Engagement of Women as Orthopaedic Surgeons at the Annual Meetings of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association From 2012 to 2022.

BACKGROUND: Higher gender diversity correlates with higher patient satisfaction, higher-quality medical education, increased research productivity, and higher revenues. Although the field of Japanese orthopaedic surgery includes the lowest proportion of women and lags in gender diversity, reports on the current gender diversity status in academic activities are scarce. We investigated changes in women's participation in academic activities at the Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) annual meetings over the past 11 years.

METHODS: Data on the percentage of women in the JOA membership during 2012-2022 were analyzed to ascertain the proportion of women as first authors of oral and poster presentations, abstract reviewers, invited lecturers, seminar lecturers, general abstract oral chairpersons, symposium chairpersons, and speakers. Regarding the ratio of women among the JOA members during 2012-2022, we relied on data provided by the JOA. Data related to other categories were collected from the abstract book presented at the JOA Annual Meetings between 2012 and 2022. We analyzed the time trend for women's proportions using the Cochran-Armitage trend test. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS: During 2012-2022, the percentage of female members (4.9-6.7%), poster first authors (2.7-4.3%), abstract reviewers (0-1.5%), general abstract oral chairpersons (0-2.3%), symposium chairpersons (0-3.6%), and symposium speakers (1.6-6.8%) had increased significantly (p < 0.05). Oral first authors (2.2-4.1%), invited lecturers (0-6.8%), or seminar lecturers (0%-6.7%) showed no trend. Women engaged in academic activities at all annual association meetings did not exceed the women's proportion among the association members.

CONCLUSION: Although the proportion of women members of the JOA has gradually increased and more women are involved in its annual meetings, the proportion of female presenters, invited speakers, symposiasts, and chairpersons of oral and poster presentations is generally lower than that of women as JOA members. Members should be asked to raise awareness, including more active education of women as physicians in educational institutions and the creation of positive actions to select women as physicians for more important roles (chairpersons, educational speakers, and symposiasts) in the organization of annual meetings.