Disparity in Gender Representation of Speakers at National Emergency Medical Services Conferences: A Current Assessment and Proposed Path Forward

Introduction: Gender disparities between Emergency Medicine physicians with regards to salary, promotion, and scholarly recognition as national conference speakers have been well-documented. However, little is known if similar gender disparities impact their out-of-hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) colleagues. Although there have been improvements in the ratio of women entering the EMS workforce, gender representation has improved at a slower rate for paramedics compared to emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Since recruitment, retention, and advancement of females within a specialty have been associated with the visibility of prominent, respected female leaders, gender disparity of these leaders as national conference speakers may contribute to the leaky pipeline effect seen within the EMS profession. Gender representation of these speakers has yet to be described objectively. Study Objective: The primary objective of this study was to determine if disparity exists in gender representation of speakers at well-known national EMS conferences and trade shows in the United States (US) from 2016-2020. The secondary objective was to determine if males were more likely than females to return to a conference as a speaker in subsequent years. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of programs from well-known national conferences, specifically for EMS providers, which were held in the US from 2016-2020 was performed. Programs were abstracted for type of conference session (pre-conference, keynote, main conference) and speakers' names. Speaker gender (male, female) was confirmed via internet search. Results: Seventeen conference programs were obtained with 1,709 conference sessions that had a total of 2,731 listed speaker names, of whom 537 (20%) were female. A total of 30 keynote addresses had 39 listed speaker names of whom six (15%) were female. No significant difference was observed in the number of years males returned to present at the same conference as compared to females. Conclusion: Gender representation of speakers at national EMS conferences in the US is not reflective of the current best estimate of the US EMS workforce. This disparity exists not only in the overall percent of female names listed as speakers, but also in the percent of individual female speakers, and is most pronounced within keynote speakers. Online lecture platforms, as an unintentional consequent of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with intentional speaker development and mentorship initiatives, may reduce barriers to facilitating a new pipeline for more females to become speakers at national EMS conferences.