(PR57) Gender Equity in Endodontic Scholarship and Academia

Introduction: The aim of this research study was to assess the association between women educator’s scholarly activity and academic rank.

Methods: Author names were downloaded using PubMed from the Journal of Endodontics (JOE), International Endodontics Journal (IEJ), and Dental Traumatology (DTrauma) for manuscripts published between 2011-2021. Gender was determined using Gender API software. The American Association of Endodontists rosters of endodontic postgraduate and pre-doctoral program directors in the United States were collected and each individual’s H-index and academic title was noted to assess the effect of scholarly activity. SAS Analytics software was used to test for associations.

Results: Of the 32,290 authors, 7,464 authors were identified as female (34%). In 2010 DTrauma 37% were female authors (147/397), by 2021 the percentage had increased to 43% (204/475). In comparison, in 2021 there were 36% (137/376) female authors in papers published in IEJ and 34% (408/1195) female authors in JOE. As of 2022, females account for 22% of US academic endodontic program directors (12/55) and 50% of pre-doctoral directors (24/48). Of the program director titles “associate professor” and “professor” positions are 75% and 83% more likely to be held by males, respectively. There is little association between H-index scores and academic position for either gender; H-indices of <5 were noted for 43% of males (19/44) and 54% of females (6/11).

Conclusions: Although female scholarly activity is increasing, there is little correlation between male and female scholarly activity, as defined by their H-index scores, and academic rank amongst US endodontic program directors.