[Presence of women in medical publications in Chile].

Abstract

Background: Despite recent initiatives and efforts, gender inequality still exists in medicine and academia. There is a higher proportion of male authors in international scientific publications.

Aim: To compare the proportion of female and male authors in the scientific publications of the main medical journals in Chile.

Material and methods: We reviewed 1,643 Scientific articles published between 2015 and 2020 in two medical journals from Chile. Three authors analyzed the title, abstract, and authors of all published articles, recording the sex of the first author, co-authors, and corresponding author.

Results: The reviewed articles had a mean of 5.3 authors and there was a significant difference between men and women (a mean of 2.8 men and 2.4 women; p < 0.001). Forty-six percent (n = 761) of the articles had a female first author. In a higher proportion of papers, men completed both positions (1st and corresponding author) simultaneously.

Conclusions: There are fewer female authors in scientific publications. Chile is one of the countries with a high rate of gender gap in the world. The underrepresentation of women in academia is an example of this.