Gender representation in leadership & research: a 13-year review of the Annual Canadian Society of Otolaryngology Meetings

Yi et al. Journal of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery https://doi.org/10.1186/s40463-023-00635-8 (2023) 52:38 ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Gender representation in leadership & research: a 13‑year review of the Annual Canadian Society of Otolaryngology Meetings Grace Yi1, Jennifer Payandeh2, Dorsa Mavedatnia3, Penelope Neocleous4, Jacob Davidson5, Jennifer Siu1, Molly Zirkle1, Julie E. Strychowsky6, M. Elise Graham6 and Yvonne Chan1*    Abstract Background The gender disparity in surgical disciplines, specifically in speakers across North American medical and surgical specialty conferences, has been highlighted in recent literature. Improving gender diversity at society meetings and panels may provide many benefits. Our aim was to determine the state of gender diversity amongst presenters and speakers at the annual Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (CSO) meetings. Methods Scientific programs for the CSO annual meetings from 2008 to 2020 were obtained from the national society website. Participant name, role, gender, location, and subspecialty topic were recorded for all roles other than poster presenter. Gender (male or female) was determined using an online search. The total number of opportunity spots and proportion of women was then calculated. Gender differences were analyzed using chi-square test and logistic regression with odds ratios. Four categories were analyzed: Society Leadership, Invited Speaker Opportunities, Workshop Composition (male-only panels or “manels”, female-only panels, or with at least one female speaker), and Oral Paper Presenters (first authors). Results There were 1874 leadership opportunity spots from 2008 to 2020, of which 18.6% were filled by women. Among elected leadership positions in the society, only 92 unique women filled 738 leadership opportunity spots. 13.2% of workshop chairs, 20.8% of panelists and 22.7% of paper session chairs were female. There was an overall increase in the proportion of leadership positions held by women, from 13.9% of leadership spots in 2008 to 30.1% in 2020. Of the 368 workshops, 61.1% were led by men only, 36.4% by at least 1 female surgeon, and 2.5% by women only. “Manels” have comprised at least 37.5% of workshops each year. Conclusions The proportion of women in speaking roles at the annual CSO meetings has generally increased over time, particularly among panelists, leading to fewer male-only speaking panels. However, there has been a slower rate of growth in the proportion of unique women in speaker roles. There remains an opportunity to increase gender/sex diversity at the major Canadian otolaryngology meeting. Keywords Gender diversity, Women in otolaryngology, Leadership, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Panels *Correspondence: Yvonne Chan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Yi et al. Journal of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery (2023) 52:38 Page 2 of 10 Background Gender disparity in surgical disciplines, including Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (OHNS), has been highlighted in recent literature. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of female staff otolaryngologists and trainees has increased by 14.2% and 13.3% respectively, where 24.2% of staff otolaryngologists were female, and 41.9% of residents were female as of 2019 [1, 2]. Despite these advances, women lack proportionate representation in leadership positions in OHNS academic departments and specialty societies, though this may be improving among junior academic positions [3–5]. Termed “manels”, male-only speaking panels at major scientific conferences have been a recent focus in the literature. Women speakers were underrepresented across multiple medical and surgical specialty conferences, including in cross-sectional analyses of various American and Canadian society meetings [6–10]. In 2019, Nature Conferences and Springer Nature released a new code of conduct to formalize efforts to increase gender diversity, including no male-only organizing committees, no male-only panels, annual monitoring of progress, and sanctions when the code is not followed [11]. Dr. Francis Collins, the National Institute of Graphical Abstract Yi et al. Journal of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery (2023) 52:38 Page 3 of 10 Health director, stated that women and other minorities were not equitably represented at major scientific conferences. He vowed to help “end the Manel tradition” by refusing to speak at a conference if attention to diversity was not given [12]. Diversity in society meetings and panel-type presentations has multiple benefits. It has the potential to expand perspectives and several studies have shown that varied opinions may lead to better ideas, innovation, and an overall stronger panel [13]. Women physicians have been shown to provide stellar patient care with excellent outcomes and have a place on these panels [14–17]. Increasing equitable representation of women and others helps perpetuate to attendees that individuals of all backgrounds are important members of the specialty society. Presentation at academic meetings and participation on scientific panels is also important for career advancement in academia. The presence of female representation helps decrease the “glass ceiling” effect noted for women in academia [13, 18]. Finally, this is an issue of justice and inclusivity [19]. While there have been studies on gender diversity amongst speakers at key surgical conferences in the United States and Europe, there has not been published literature assessing this in our specialty in Canada. The Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (CSO) is the major Otolaryngology society in Canada and encompasses all Otolaryngology subspecialties. Our aim was to determine the state of gender diversity amongst presenters and speakers at the annual CSO meetings. information, (...truncated)