Persistent Gender Disparity in Authorship of Arthroscopic Surgery Research.

Purpose: To examine how the gender of the first and last authors of annual meeting abstracts and journal articles from a related source have changed between 2012 and 2022. Methods: All abstracts and original research articles published from 2012 to 2022 were extracted from the websites of The Arthroscopy Association of North America and Results: Of 850 abstracts, 845 (99.4%) had an identifiable first-author gender and 843 (99.2%) had an identifiable last-author gender. The proportion of female first authors increased from 9.2% in 2012 to 15.2% in 2022, whereas the proportion of female last authors decreased from 13.5% in 2012 to 12.3% in 2022. Of 4,811 articles, 4,744 (98.6%) had an identifiable first author gender and 4,767 (99.1%) had an identifiable last author gender. The proportion of female first authors increased from 10.4% in 2012 to 16.8% in 2022, whereas the proportion of female last authors decreased from 19.0% in 2012 to 9.1% in 2022. For both abstracts and articles, the gender of the last author was not significantly associated with the presence of a female first author. Conclusions: Between 2021 and 2022, there was a significant increase in the proportion of female first authors of both abstracts and articles examined in this study. However, a similar increase was not seen among last authors. Clinical Relevance: It is important to examine gender representation among authors who publish arthroscopic research to understand how a greater balance may be achieved.