Greater Gender Diversity Observed at Orthopaedic Conferences in the Caribbean Than in the United States or England.

Introduction Women are underrepresented in orthopaedics. Recent studies have shown that women comprise only a very small proportion of all practising orthopaedic surgeons in the United States. One theory that seeks to explain this disparity is the lack of female mentors in orthopaedic surgery. Women are particularly influenced by same-sex mentors, and the paucity of mentors sets up a negative feedback loop that further reduces applications to residency programs. Presentation of scholarly work at conferences increases the visibility of women and represents important opportunities to encourage young female doctors to the speciality. The annual meeting of The Caribbean Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons (TCOS) is a forum that allows regional exposure to young doctors. In the present work, we aim to analyse the gender diversity among presenters at the annual TCOS meetings. Methods A retrospective analysis of the final programs of TCOS meetings over five years was conducted to determine the sex of the presenter, their roles, and topics. The first author listed on the program was taken as the presenter unless it was otherwise stated. Gender was determined using conventional naming taxonomy. Presenters were classified as podium presenters or moderators and presentations as clinical or non-clinical. We subdivided clinical presentations into seven subspecialty areas. A Chi-squared test was used to calculate differences between groups, with a p-value of < 0.05 representing significance. Statistical tests were performed using Analyse-it for Microsoft Excel 5.40 (Analyse-it Software Ltd). Results There was a total of 195 podium presentations over the study period. During this time, there was a steady increase in the number of presentations by women, with a mean value of 19.5%. Compared with men, women presented fewer clinical papers (52.6%vs 73.9%, p=0.037), presented on more general topics (63.2% vs 31.2%, p=0.007) and were less likely to moderate a session (2.7% vs 97.3%, p=0.014). Presentations by female residents were marginally higher than the mean rate for women overall and were representative of the gender distribution in the resident pool. Conclusions There are significantly fewer presentations by women than men at the annual TCOS meetings. Encouragingly, however, there is a positive trend towards greater female presentations over the study period. Our results show that despite being underrepresented, more women are presenting at orthopaedic conferences in the Caribbean than in the United States or England.