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Medical publishing and peer review
Original research
Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
  1. Eva N Hamulyák1,
  2. Austin J Brockmeier2,
  3. Johanna D Killas3,
  4. Sophia Ananiadou4,5,
  5. Saskia Middeldorp1,
  6. Armand M Leroi6,7
  1. 1Department of Vascular Medicine, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  2. 2Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA
  3. 3Health Studies Programme, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  4. 4Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester National Centre for Text Mining, Manchester, UK
  5. 5The Alan Turing Institute, London, UK
  6. 6Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK
  7. 7Data Science Institute, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Eva N Hamulyák; e.n.hamulyak{at}amsterdamumc.nl

Abstract

Objective To determine how the representation of women’s health has changed in clinical studies over the course of 70 years.

Design Observational study of 71 866 research articles published between 1948 and 2018 in The BMJ.

Main outcome measures The incidence of women-specific health topics over time. General linear, additive and segmented regression models were used to estimate trends.

Results Over 70 years, the overall odds that a word in a BMJ research article was ‘woman’ or ‘women’ increased by an annual factor of 1.023, but this rate of increase varied by clinical specialty with some showing little or no change. The odds that an article was about some aspect of women-specific health increased much more slowly, by an annual factor of 1.004. The incidence of articles about particular areas of women-specific medicine such as pregnancy did not show a general increase, but rather fluctuated over time. The incidence of articles making any mention of women, gender or sex declined between 1948 and 2005, after which it rose steeply so that by 2018 few papers made no mention of them at all.

Conclusions Over time women have become ever more prominent in BMJ research articles. However, the importance of women-specific health topics has waxed and waned as researchers responded ephemerally to medical advances, public health programmes, and sociolegal changes. The appointment of a woman editor-inchief in 2005 may have had a dramatic effect on whether women were mentioned in research articles.

  • women’s health
  • clinical studies
  • representation
  • BMJ
  • editor
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039759

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    Footnotes

    • SM and AML are joint senior authors.

    • Contributors ENH, SM and AML designed the study. AJB, SA and AML acquired the data. AJB and AML performed the analyses. ENH, JDK and AML drafted the manuscript. All authors provided critical comment and feedback on the manuscript. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted. SM and AML are the guarantors of this manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data are available in a public, open access repository. We have made our code and data public: https://github.com/Armand1/Women-in-the-BMJ-public.