Gender trends at the annual meetings of two major Japanese societies of sports medicine: a 17-year summary of annual meeting moderators and speakers.

Abstract

To assess for gender disparity among invited moderators and speakers at two major sports medicine conferences in Japan. The moderators and invited speakers of the Japanese Society of Clinical Sports Medicine (JSCSM) (2008-2023) and the Japanese Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (JOSSM) (2007-2023) were categorized by gender. Gender was determined by searching the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare physician website and then confirmed using a Google search. Fisher's exact tests were used to evaluate the gender distribution. Cochran-Armitage trend tests were used to evaluate changes in gender distribution over time. In the past 17 years, neither JSCSM or JOSSM had a woman moderator or speaker in Program Chair's lectures. Between 2018 and 2023, the number of women moderators (<i>n</i> = 59) at JSCSM conference was 1.41% of the total women members (<i>n</i> = 4177), which is significantly lower than 2.22% men moderators (<i>n</i> = 544) out of total men membership (<i>n</i> = 24397), (<i>p</i> < .001). Between 2007 and 2023, the number of women moderators (<i>n</i> = 28) at JOSSM was 1.82% of the total women members (<i>n</i> = 1536), which is significantly lower than 5.91% men who were moderators (<i>n</i> = 1809) out of the total membership of men (<i>n</i> = 30595), (<i>p</i> < 0.001). Since 2008, there was an 11.4% increase in women moderators at JSCSM conferences (1.9% in 2008 to 13.3% in 2023, p-value for trend < 0.001), with a more modest increase of 2.3% at JOSSM conferences (0% in 2007 to 2.3% in 2023, p-value for trend < 0.001). There were similar increases in women invited speakers for JSCSM (14.1% in 2008 to 16.9% in 2023, p-value for trend = 0.001) and for JOSSM (1.2% in 2007 to 3.7% in 2023, p-value for trend = 0.04). Although both Japanese orthopedic sports medical societies showed increasing trends in the percentage of women in prominent speaking roles, women speakers and moderators are still rare at the Japanese sports conferences.