Gender gap in rheumatology: speaker representation at annual conferences.

Adami et al ’s report of gender disparities in the first authorship of rheumatology guidelines was very interesting to read.1 The authors highlight a fundamental issue: the existence of a gender gap—that is, proportionately more male than female physicians—within the authorship ranks in rheumatology. We had thought that it would be intriguing to investigate whether this difference permeates at the national conference level as well. Recent studies have quantified the gender gap among speakers at academic conferences in other specialties. The most extensive study of 181 medical conferences held in North America over the course of a decade (2007–2017) found an increase in the proportion of female speakers …