Abstract
Background:
Prior research has shown that there are fewer women than men participants in sports and exercise medicine research.
Purpose:
To determine how participation in sports and exercise medicine research has changed and compares between women and men, overall and by sport of participants.
Study Design:
Meta-analysis; Level of evidence, 4.
Methods:
The authors identified original research articles published in 2020 in 3 influential sports and exercise medicine journals (British Journal of Sports Medicine, American Journal of Sports Medicine, and Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise). Articles were analyzed as a group overall and within subsets distinguishing sport-specific articles. For the complete set and each subset, the pooled proportions of participants by gender and the mean percentage of women participants per article were calculated.
Results:
A total of 579 articles were included in the analysis. There were 1,693,304 participants pooled across all articles, of whom 54.4% were men and 45.6% were women. There was a mean of 37% women participants per article. Among all articles that included athletes of a single sport, 80% of the pooled participants were men and 20% were women, with a mean of 19.6% women participants per article.
Conclusion:
There were fewer women than men participants in this sample overall and especially in sport-specific articles.
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Supplementary Material
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