Worldwide, women have shaped medical education, healthcare, and research. They now make up half of all medical schools— at MGIMS, in a dozen batches (86, 87, 90-94, 98-99, 2001, 2011 and 2014) girls outnumbered boys. They have led the institute, the department, and the units.
They have also published papers that have changed the face of Medicine. The Apgar score, for example.
Strangely, women often find themselves being pushed down the author sequence when they publish papers in high impact journals. They are often denied the honour—female first authorship—that they richly deserve.
A 2016 BMJ study is an eye-opener. This study shows that among the close to 4000 articles published in world’s leading medical journals in the last two decades, women had a one in three chance of being the first author of the published manuscript. The female first authorship did rise from 27% in 1994 to 37% in 2014, but in several journals, it fell substantially.
How best can we account for this gender difference? The BMJ study says that “bias disadvantages women at all stages of the research process—from career choice and progression to funding applications to publication.” The funding agencies, the editorial boards, the reviewers, and even the media fuel this bias. Female first author manuscripts are more likely to be harshly reviewed, are more likely to be rejected, and less likely to be acknowledged for their contribution to science.
Cynics—no prizes for guessing their gender—might argue that women need to balance their family with their career; they love their kids much more than they love their papers, and they are not as career conscious as their male counterparts. And therefore, they produce fewer first author papers in high-impact journals.
I do not buy these arguments. They sound hollow. Men in the medical world often ensure that their self-fulfilling prophecies come true. And they lack the grace to offer first author privilege to their female colleagues.
Time to bridge the first author gap!