Is There Gender Disparity in Orthopedic Surgery Resident Research Productivity?

Abstract

Background: Compared with male senior authors, female senior authors publish less often in orthopedic journals than expected based on their population proportion. It is unknown whether this trend is also present among orthopedic trainees. Purpose: We sought to determine whether there is a gender discrepancy in the publication volume and authorship status among orthopedic residents. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis to evaluate the research productivity of male and female orthopedic residents. The top 10 ranked US orthopedic surgery residencies by research output in 2021–2022 were obtained from Doximity. Residents’ names were recorded from each institution’s residency website. We classified each resident as male or female, searched on PubMed, and recorded the number of publications relevant to orthopedic surgery. Resident contribution to each publication was recorded as either a first/last author or a middle author. To assess contributions by postgraduate year, we compared male and female junior residents (PGY1-3) and senior residents (PGY4-5) using the number of total publications, middle author publications, first/last author publications, and the difference between the number of middle and first/last author publications. Results: Among the 335 male and 117 female residents included, male residents had more total publications than female residents. Among PGY4-5, male residents had more total publications and middle author publications. There was no difference in the number of first/last author publications between male and female PGY4-5 residents. Conclusions: Our cross-sectional analysis found that in the 2021–2022 academic year, male orthopedic surgery residents published more often than female residents, although among PGY4-5 residents, we found no gender differences in number of first/last author publications. The difference in total publications among PGY4-5 residents is likely due to differences in middle author publications. Future research should consider residents’ self-identified gender, including non-binary and gender-fluid identity.