Under-representation of women in the editorial boards of medical and dental journals of Pakistan

Objective: To explore the representation of females in the field of medical journal editing in Pakistan. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from July 3 to 15, 2015 at Combined Military Hospital, Lahore. After exploring the website of Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, we surveyed the website of each journal and from their latest available edition discerned the editorial board's gender composition. Designations of female members were noted. Data was analysed using SPSS 20. Results: A total of 2342 members served on the editorial boards of 79 journals of which 410(17.51%) were females. The maximum strength of women in a single journal was 23/30(76.6%). There were no women in the editorial boards of 11 (13.92%) journals. Among others, there were 188 (45.9%) Members of Editorial Board, 39 (9.5%) Editors, 39 (9.5%) Associate Editors, 34 (8.3 %) Members Advisory Board, 22 (5.4%) Subject Editors, 10 (2.4%) Editors-in-chief, 8 (2.0%) Student Editors, 7 (1.7%) Statisticians, 3 (0.7%) Bibliographers, 2 (0.5%) Deputy Editors-in-chief, 1 (0.2%) Trainee Editor and 1(0.2%) epidemiologist. Conclusion: There was a low representation of women in the field of journal editing. A number of factors may be incriminated for this poor visibility.