State family support policies and their impact on women's representation and productivity in surgical research: A web-scraping comparative analysis.

BACKGROUND

Gender disparities in academic surgery persist, with women underrepresented as first authors and facing significant barriers to research productivity. Family-supportive policies, including paid family leave and reproductive rights protections, have been suggested as potential solutions to mitigate these disparities. However, their impact on women representation in surgical research has not been comprehensively evaluated.

STUDY DESIGN

This cross-sectional analysis, using a web-scraping methodology, examined 198,542 first-author publications from 388 PubMed-indexed surgery journals published between 2010 and 2022. Gender differences in research output and representation were assessed across US states with and without family-supportive policies, specifically mandatory paid family leave and protective reproductive rights. We compared women representation among first authors and analyzed the average publication count for women authors, examining gender disparities at publication thresholds of 1, 2, and 5 papers.

RESULTS

Women comprised 33.0% of all first authors, with representation decreasing at higher publication thresholds. States with paid family leave showed higher women representation among first authors compared with non-paid family leave states (34.2% vs 32.3%; P < .001), and similarly, protective reproductive rights states had more women representation than restrictive states (33.9% vs 32.0%; P < .001). Among authors with 5 or more publications, women represented 25.1% in paid family leave states versus 22.6% in non-paid family leave states (P = .005), and 24.6% in reproductive rights states versus 22.3% in restrictive states (P = .010). Women in states with these policies also saw significantly higher average publication counts (P < .001).

CONCLUSION

State-level paid family leave and reproductive rights policies are associated with improved women representation and reduced gender disparities in surgical research. Our results indicate a statistically significant association between family-supportive policies and increased women's authorship, suggesting that such policies may play a role in shaping the academic trajectories of women in surgery.