Speaker Gender Representation at the North American Neuromodulation Society Annual Meeting (2017-2021): Have We Made Progress in Closing the Gender Gap?

Speaker gender representation at medical conferences is a significant site of gender disparity. Our primary objective was to quantify the proportion of female speakers and compare plenary session opportunities by gender at the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS) Annual Conference. Data from the 2017-2021 NANS Annual Conference presentations were abstracted. Primary outcomes included gender composition of speaker slots, gender composition of individual speakers, and comparison of plenary speaker slots by gender. Secondary outcomes included comparisons of session size, age, professional degree, and number of presentations per speaker based on gender. Gender composition of annual speaker slots was (% slots presented by women): 2017:14.6%; 2018:20.5%; 2019:23.5%; 2020:21.0%; 2021:41.4%. Annual gender composition of individual speakers was (% women): 2017:18.7%; 2018:20.6%; 2019:24.6%; 2020:24.9%; 2021:33.8%. Of all speaker slots, the percentage of plenary slots did not differ based on gender, with 11.4% presented by female speakers versus 11.2% presented by male speakers (OR 1.0, 95% CI 0.7-1.5, P=0.893). Compared to male speaker slots, there was an association of lower age (43.9±5.6 vs 50.8±8.9, P