Available online 17 March 2023

Women are underrepresented in surgery and in surgical conferences.

Female trainees in urology in Ireland overall are increasing in numbers.

Women remain underrepresented in the main Irish urology annual meeting.

Gender discrepancy remained prevalent with guest speakers and panel chairs.

There is underrepresentation of women at surgical conferences. We examine the representation of women in Irish urology by looking at gender balance within the Irish Society of Urology (ISU) conference.

ISU programmes over thirteen years from 2008 to 2020 were assessed and female representation in session chairs, guest speakers, poster and oral presentations identified. Gender distributions of authors for each year was examined. To investigate changes in female representation temporally, the period of this study (2008–2020) was subdivided and compared: 2008–2013 and 2014–2020.

76 sessions were presided over by 138 chairs, of which 6 (4.3%) were female. Eight conferences had zero female chairs. 62 guest lectures were given, 6 (9.6%) by women. Of total 340 poster and 434 oral presentations, women delivered 24.9% (0–47.5%) of posters and 31.6% (10.3–59.4%) of oral presentations. We found no significant difference in the percentage of female poster presentations between the time periods 2008–2013 (m = 18.2, sd = 13.7) and 2014–2020 (m = 34.3, sd = 17.8), t(11) = −1.4, p > 0.05. However, we found a significant difference in the percentage of female oral presentations between the periods 2008–2013 (m = 18.7, sd = 14.2) and 2014–2020 (m = 40.6, sd = 14.5), t(11) = −2.8, p < 0.05.

Our study is the second to examine female representation in Irish urology. Session chairs and guest speakers were grossly overrepresented by males as were oral and poster presentations. Despite lacking female influence overall, in more recent years there was an increased representation of women. Societies should strive to increase female representation, as this perpetuates a positive feedback loop, encouraging future female trainees to pursue urological surgery.

Urology

Women

Trainees

Gender

Surgery

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Scottish charity number SC005317) and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.