Trends in gender representation of women as authors and participants over five decades of the journal of biomechanics.

Abstract

The study's purposes were, by analyzing all Journal of Biomechanics publications from one year in each of six decades, to quantify in those published studies 1) the contribution of female authors, 2) the inclusion of female participants, and 3) if female or male authors were more likely to conduct studies with only female participants. All research articles published in the Journal of Biomechanics for one year of each decade, 1970 to 2020, were analyzed. Two trained assessors identified the gender of the authors of 1490 research papers, and the gender and number of participants in the studies. The proportion of women as authors grew over the decades from 5.5 % in 1970 to 26.5 % in 2020. Women as first or last author had a similar pattern (4.9 % - 1970; 43.3 % - 2020). There were 658 experimental studies with human participants, but not all of them reported the gender of their participants and/or the number of participants. In studies reporting gender, in 1980 52.4 % had male participants only, 9.5 % women only, and 38.1 % were mixed; by 2020 these numbers were 23.1 %, 11.0 %, and 65.9 %. Female authors were more likely than male authors to produce studies with female only participants (p < 0.001). To improve the reporting and proportions of the genders in studies journal guidelines, their editors and reviewers, and funding agencies all have a role to play. This study provides benchmark data that future research can be used to monitor changes in gender representation among authors and participants in biomechanics studies.