Women speaker representation at SAGES annual meetings: a cross-sectional analysis

Background: Gender representation trends at the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) Annual Meetings and the effect of the 2018 ‘We R SAGES’ initiatives are unknown. We assessed gender trends in oral presentations at the SAGES Annual Meeting between 2012 and 2022 with a focus on assessing the impact of the 2018 initiatives. Methods: Abstracts selected for oral presentations from 2012 to 2022 were reviewed for presenter and first, second, and senior author gender. Gender was categorized as woman, man, or unknown using public professional profiles. Subsequent publications were identified using search engines. The primary outcome was the temporal trend of proportion of women in each role using interrupted time series analysis. Secondary outcomes included publication rates based on first and senior author genders in 2012–2018 versus 2019–2022. Results: 1605 abstracts were reviewed. The proportion of women increased linearly in all categories: presenter (2.4%/year, R²= 0.91), first author (2.4%/year, R²= 0.90), senior author (2%/year, R²= 0.65), and overall (2.2%, R²= 0.91), (p< 0.01 for all). Prior to 2018, the proportion of women increased annually for presenters (coefficient: 0.026, 95% CI [0.016, 0.037], p= 0.002) and first authors (coefficient: 0.026, 95% CI [0.016, 0.037], p= 0.002), but there was no significant increase after 2018 (p> 0.05). Female second author proportion increased annually prior to 2018 (coefficient: 0.012, 95% CI [0.003, 0.021], p= 0.042) and increased by 0.139 (95% CI [0.070, 0.208], p= 0.006) in 2018. Annual female senior author proportion did not significantly change after 2018 (p> 0.05). 1198 (75.2%) abstracts led to publications. Women were as likely as men to be first (79% vs 77%, p= 0.284) or senior author (79% vs 77%, p= 0.702) in abstracts culminating in publications. There was no difference in woman first author publication rate before and after 2018 (80% vs 79%, p= 1.000), but woman senior author publication rate increased after 2018 (71% vs 83%, p= 0.032). Conclusion: There was an upward trend in women surgeons’ presentations and associated publications in the SAGES Annual Meetings over the last decade.