title: Are there too few women presenting at emergency medicine conferences?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  There is a perception that women are under-represented as speakers at emergency medicine (EM) conferences. We aimed to evaluate the ratio of male to female speakers and the proportion of presenting time by gender at major international EM conferences.
  
  
  METHODS
  Conference programmes of the major English-speaking EM conferences occurring from 2014 to 2015 were obtained. The number of presentations, the gender of the speaker and the duration of each presentation were recorded.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We analysed eight major EM conferences. These included 2382 presentations, of which 29.9% (range 22.5%-40.9%) were given by women. In total, 56 104 min of presentations were analysed, of which 27.6% (range 21%-36.7%) were delivered by women. On average, presentations by women were 95 s shorter than presentations by men (23 vs 21 min 25 s).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Male speakers exceed female speakers at major EM conferences. The reasons for this imbalance are likely complex and multifactorial and may reflect the gender imbalance within the specialty.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Evidence Based Emergency Care, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK Department of Emergency Medicine, Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carley
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Carden
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Riley
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Natalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: May
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Södertälje Hospital, Södertälje, Sweden.
authors.forename: Katrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hruska
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, University Hospital Southampton, Southampton, UK.
authors.forename: Iain
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Beardsell
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johnston
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, UK.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Body
mesh_terms: D003226:Congresses as Topic; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014930:Women
keywords: communications; education; management; management, HR management