Gender Parity Remains To Be Achieved for the Range of Editorial Roles Associated with Current Australasian Medical Journals

Abstract

With gender parity of medical school graduates having been achieved for well over two decades, it is timely to assess whether this has translated into gender parity for all of the editorial type roles of Australasian medical journals, reflecting a move toward gender equity. Data analysis was undertaken of the gender ratios of the current editorial roles of Australasian medical journals as compared to available Australian Health Workforce data. This reveals some variation in the gender ratios for all of the current range of editorial type positions and, hence, an absence of parity. There are no women holding formal editorial positions at all for 27.7% of these journals, whilst 77.7% of the chief editors' roles are occupied by men. For five out of 18 (27.7%) of the journals, gender parity has been or is close to having been achieved for these particular roles. These gender ratios do not mirror the gender ratios of the wider community of practice for at least 50% of the journals. Hence, it can be seen that gender parity is yet to be achieved for the range of editorial roles of Australasian medical journals, which carries implications for gender equity initiatives. Copyright © 2020, Verran et al.