IS THERE A SEX BIAS IN CHOOSING EDITORS?
EPIDEMIOLOGY JOURNALS AS AN EXAMPLE

Kay Dickersin,¹ Lisa Fredman,¹ Katherine M Flegal,² Jane D Scott,³ and Barbara Crawley^1
1Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 506 W Fayette St, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA; ²National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hyattsville, MD, USA; ³The Charles McC Mathias Jr National Study Center for Trauma and Emergency Medical Systems, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

Objective: To test the hypothesis that women are represented at a lower proportion than men in editorial positions in US epidemiology journals and that this proportion is less than their representation as authors and reviewers. To test a secondary hypothesis that representation of women in editorial positions has increased over time.

Design: The proportion of editors, authors, and reviewers of each sex of 4 major US general epidemiology journals, American Journal of Epidemiology, Annals of Epidemiology, Epidemiology, and the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (formerly the Journal of Chronic Diseases), were examined for 1982, 1987, 1992, and 1994. Included in these issues were 2,415 reports associated with 8,005 authors names, 2,982 reviewer names, and 695 editor names.

Results: Only 1 of 7 editors-in-chief was a woman, a position she shared with a man. For all journals, the proportion of editors (covering 3 editorial tiers) who were women ranged from 6.5% in 1982 to 16.0% in 1994. Disproportion existed at each editorial tier (eg, editor-in-chief, associate editors, and editorial boards). Over all journals and all years, we found a higher proportion of authors who were women (28.7%) compared to reviewers (26.7%), and editors (12.7%), and these proportions were significantly different overall for each year studied (all P values < 0.001). The 2 journals that started publishing in the 1990s had a higher proportion of editors that were women than the other 2 journals. In 1994, the journal with a woman co-editor-in-chief had the highest proportion of authors, reviewers, and editors who were women.

Conclusions: It is not clear why there was a lower proportion of editors who were women than authors or reviewers. The fact that the proportion of editors who were women in 1994 is still considerably lower than the proportion of women who were authors in 1982, as well as other factors, does not support a cohort effect as the sole explanation for the phenomenon we have observed. Another possible explanation is a selection bias favoring men for editorial positions.

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