Gender gap in the authorship of published articles in the Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México

Abstract

Background: Women’s participation in medicine has increased in the last decades, with greater representativeness in the authorship of scientific articles in many countries and different specialties. The objective of this research was to analyze the gender gap in the authorship of articles through the history of the medical journal Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México. Methods: In a bibliometric analysis, we reviewed original articles published during the years 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003, and 2013. The gender of the author, the type of authorship (first author or corresponding author), and the design of the study (descriptive vs. analytic) were identified. We evaluated the difference between gender proportion and trends over time. Results: We included 272 articles. We observed a gender gap reduction between 1953 and 2013. The participation of women as the first author increased from 2% to 63% (p < 0.001) and as the corresponding author from 27% to 59% (p < 0.001). If we include only analytic studies, the increase was 25-50% as the first author (p = 0.03), with a similar tendency as the corresponding author, but without a statistical significance on time (p = 0.19). We observed the most notable change in the 1983-1993 period. conclusions: In the last decades, there has been a significant increase in women’s authorship in the medical journal Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México, even reaching a greater proportion versus the male gender. This increase reflects the present role of women in