Abstract

BACKGROUND: During the past decade, a growing number of women have pursued medical careers, including in plastic surgery. However, woman physicians have tended to be underrepresented in a variety of leadership roles in their respective specialties.OBJECTIVE: We sought to evaluate the representation of female plastic surgeons on the editorial boards of high impact plastic surgery journals.METHODS: The gender of editorial board members on three high impact plastic surgery journals was evaluated from 2009 and 2018. The number of women on each editorial board was than compared to the number of board certified female plastic surgeons (BCFPS) and board certified female academic plastic surgeons (BCFAPS), a subgroup of BCFPS.RESULTS: There were 555 unique editorial board members from Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery (PRS), Aesthetic Surgery Journal (ASJ), and Annals of Plastic Surgery (APS) from 2009 to 2018. During that period, 72 editors (13.0%) were women. At the beginning of the study, there were significantly fewer female editors than expected based on proportionate representation of BCFPS and BCFAPS to all board certified Plastic Surgeons (ABCPS) (p=0.007, 0.007 respectively). Over the course of the study there has been a 177% increase in women holding editorial board positions. At the end of the study period, women were adequately represented on all three editorial boards compared to their population data (BCFPS and BCFAPS).CONCLUSIONS: Over the ten year period of this study (2009-2018), editorial boards have overcome the underrepresentation of women on their editorial boards and female plastic surgeons are currently adequately represented on the top three high impact journal editorial boards.

View details for DOI 10.1093/asj/sjab034

View details for PubMedID 33491085