Study: Gender parity among orthopedic surgeons will take more than 200 years to achieve
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With the proportion of female orthopedic surgeons increasing at a rate of 2% annually, the orthopedic profession is projected to achieve gender parity in 217 years, or by 2236, according to published results.
To determine how percentages of women among all currently practicing orthopedic providers has changed in the United States, researchers used the National Provider Identier Registry of the CMS to identify 31,296 practicing orthopedic surgeons, of which 8% were women.
After performing linear regression and factoring in the overall proportion of women in the United States, researchers projected that gender parity could be achieved when women represent 36.3% of the profession. According to the study, the national proportion of female orthopedic surgeons increased from 6% to 8% from 2010 to 2019, a compound annual growth rate of 2%.
Assuming the 2% growth rate, the time to achieve gender parity within the orthopedic medical profession is projected to be 217 years, or by the year 2236, the researchers found.
Additionally, researchers noted the lowest growth rates of women in the profession were reported in the West and South regions of the United States, as well as in adult reconstruction and spine surgery subspecialities.
“Given this meager growth, we believe that substantive changes must be made across all levels of orthopedic education and leadership to steepen the current curve,” the researchers wrote in the study. “These include mandating that all medical school curricula include dedicated exposure to orthopedic surgery to increase the number of women coming through the orthopedic pipeline.”
Perspective
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Two hundred seventeen years is just a hop, skip and a jump away. According to Acuña and colleagues, that is how long it will take to achieve gender parity among orthopedic surgeons. Certainly, it is a daunting number and worth a closer look.
In their recent analysis of 31,296 practicing orthopedic surgeons identified using the National Provider Identifier Registry, the authors found 8% identified as women. The authors then used linear regression to evaluate changes in the annual proportion of women orthopedic surgeons between 2010 (6% women) and 2019 (8% women), and calculated a compound annual growth rate of 2%. Next, by using publicly available data describing the proportion of all women physicians in the United States (36.3% based on 2019 AMA data) and all women in the United States (50.8% based on 2019 U.S. Census data), the authors determined it would take 217 years to achieve gender parity with the overall medical profession (assuming a stable annual growth rate).
First and foremost, the authors should be commended for putting together such an incredible amount of data. When reading a study such as this, many questions come up. For me, those questions include: 1) Why is the current proportion of women so low?; 2) What is being done, and what needs to be done, to improve the numbers?; and 3) Why does this matter?
Candidly speaking, many people may focus on that last question first, and my take is this – it matters, because representation matters. It matters, because we need our workforce to better represent our patient population, nationally and globally. It matters because we need to improve health disparities in all aspects of medicine and, particularly, orthopedic surgery. We cannot truly make improvements until we recognize the challenges, and this paper elegantly outlines many of the current challenges, as well as strategies for improvement.
Some strategies include increasing the number of female faculty in academic programs and in leadership positions across the field, particularly within fellowship programs and specialty societies. Additional strategies are outlined in the manuscript, and I encourage readers to take a closer look. We owe it to our patients, and to our trainees, to do better than 217 years.
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