Journal of women's health
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Journal of women's health · Nov 2022
National Email Communication Platforms May Indicate or Contribute to Gender Disparities: Preliminary Analysis of an Academic Medicine Listserv.
Background: Gender disparities are well documented in the academic medicine literature and have been shown to impact representation, rank, and leadership opportunities for women. Social media platforms, including electronic mailing lists (listservs), may contribute to disparities by differentially highlighting or promoting individuals' work in academic and public health settings. Because of this, they provide a record by which to assess the presence of gender disparities; therefore, they become tools to identify gender differences in the frequency or pattern of representation. ⋯ The prevalence of women in announcements from the 2012-2014 and 2018-2019 samples also varied based on setting. Conclusions: Findings support the presence of gender disparities in these sets of listserv communications. While social media overall is not considered to be a source of complete information, this study analyzed the same listserv communication by the same organization over the entire period, thereby providing a window into the frequency and type of representation of women's professional activity in academic medicine.