Proportion of male and female professionals in neurosurgery

Introduction: The specialty of neurosurgery over time has become increasingly sought after. Even with the gradual increase in women specialists in neurosurgery, they are still represented by a very small number in comparison to the number of male neurosurgeons. Objectives: Present the gender gap within neurosurgery. Methods: This is a systematic literature review, with the search terms: “gender” AND “women” AND “Neurology” AND “Neurosurgery”, resulting in 645 articles on the Pubmed, Lilacs, Scielo, Cochrane and TripDataBase search platforms. The inclusion criteria were: original studies published in any language. Published articles that prevented full access, as well as systematic reviews or not, were excluded. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 6 articles were included. Results: The databases of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and American Board of Neurological Surgery (ABNS) revealed that women represent only 12.0% of residents in neurosurgery. Most of them left training in the first 3 years and remained in Medicine, looking for other specialties. In addition, the female conflict rate with the team was 17.0% compared to a 5.3% male rate. The low number of women in neurosurgical residency programs can result in a consequent decrease in female tutors, lack of rise in female professionals and non-adherence of medical students in residency programs. Conclusions: The percentage of women in medicine has increased in recent years, however the number of women who pursue a neurosurgical career is still very small, when compared to the total number of neurosurgeon men.