476 Manels and Gender Representation at Major Urological Surgery Conferences
H C K Leung, M Georgi, A Asif, M Fricker, S Patel, A K Raja, A Gargan, K Gargan, K Lee, O E Burton, R Kamboj, A Thamilmaran, Z Abdi, S Haque, F Tse, C Moore, A Nathan- Surgery
Abstract
Aim
Females are disproportionately under-represented in surgery despite the upward trend in women entering the medical profession (Rakestraw et al., 2022). Visibility of female surgeons at academic meetings gives a cross-sectional view of inclusion within the field. We aimed to quantify the proportion of female faculty and prevalence of all-male panels (“manels”) at major international urological surgery meetings.
Method
We retrospectively analysed annual meetings organised by major urological surgery associations or societies between January 2016 and December 2021. Demographic and academic metrics, including H-index, number of publications, and number of citations were collected for each invited lecturer, panellist and chair/moderator.
Results
Twenty-two conferences held by four urological surgery organisations were identified, including 1871 sessions delivered by 5427 speakers. On average across all speakers, 12.0% (n = 643) were female. Of the 838 panel sessions, 584 (69.7%) were manels. Percentage of manels was statistically significant between online and in-person conferences (online 64.6% versus in-person 75.1%; p<0.05). There was a statistically significant difference in the proportion of manels over time (79.4% in 2016 versus 28.8% in 2021; p<0.05). Male invited lecturers had significantly higher H-index than female invited lecturers (male 32 versus female 17; p<0.05).
Conclusions
Despite the encouraging findings that manels are becoming less prevalent in major urological surgery meetings, manels continue to comprise the majority, whilst female speaker representation remains poor. This study hopes to highlight the need for greater gender diversity and female representation in urology.