Gender gap in the authorship of published articles in the Boletin Medico del Hospital Infantil de Mexico

Background: Women's participation in medicine has increased in the last decades, with greater representativeness in the authorship of scientific articles in many countries and different specialties. The objective of this research was to analyze the gender gap in the authorship of articles through the history of the medical journal Boletin Medico del Hospital Infantil de Mexico. Methods: In a bibliometric analysis, we reviewed original articles published during the years 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013. The gender of the author, type of authorship (first author or corresponding author) and the design of the study (descriptive vs analytic) were identified. We evaluated the difference between gender proportion and trends over time. Results: We included 272 articles. We observed a gender gap reduction between 1953 and 2013. The participation of women as first author increased from 2 to 63% (p < 0.001) and as corresponding author from 27 to 59% (p < 0.001). If we include only analytic studies, the increasing was 25 to 50% as first author (p = 0.03), with a similar tendency as corresponding author, but without a statistical significant on time (p = 0.19). We observed the most notable change since 1983-1993. Conclusions: In the last decades, there has been a significant increase in women's authorship in the medical journal Boletin Medico del Hospital Infantil de Mexico, even reaching a greater proportion against male gender. This reflects the present role of women in medicine, particularly in pediatrics.