Background and Aims There is a lack of data on the distribution of female authorships in pain journals. Using articles published in the top North American pain journals over the past two decades, we sought to describe the prevalence and changes in female representation amongst first and last authors.

Methods We retrieved all research articles published in the top 3 pain journals (Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine,Clinical Journal of Pain,and Pain) from 2002 to 2021 using the easyPubMed package. Subsequently, the ‘gender’ package¹ in R was used to determine authors’ gender by first names. Trends in gender authorship change over time were assessed.

Results A total of 16,317 authors were identified. Female authors were more often first compared to senior authors (45.7% vs. 30.0%). The proportion of female first authors (45% in 2002 vs. 49% in 2021) and female senior authors (24% in 2002 vs. 36% in 2021) increased over the course of the study period (Figure 1&2. all p-values <0.001). The Clinical Journal of Pain had the highest percentage of female authors and Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine had the lowest percentage of female authors. (Table 1)

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Abstract B150 Figure 1

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Abstract B150 Figure 2

Conclusions Our data demonstrated increasing female authorship in pain journals in the past 20 years, largely driven by an increase first authorships. There still remains a large gap between first and senior authorship, indicative of disparity in the role that women play in research. More support and resources should be invested to encourage female investigators to advance their (research) careers.