Cross sectional analysis of gender and geographic representation in case study TWD-A

Background: The scientific community should be at the forefront of diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, research suggests that there are wide disparities regarding gender and geography (Lariviere et al. 2013). The National Institutes of Health uses taxpayer money to review and determine who and what projects to fund. We are studying the representation of two subsets of researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health: gender and geography. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the disparities in gender and geography in the TWD-A case study from the National Institutes of Health.

Methods: Our team obtained the rosters for the TWD-A National Institutes of Health study section panels for all meetings held in 2016 and 2021 from the institution’s website. We intended to evaluate data from 2011 but there was no meeting roster available. We extracted the study section members' names, degrees, city, and state of residence; we then used a pilot test to google formfor data extraction. Gender was determined through website searches of their respective institutions and if it could not be determined through that mechanism, we used genderize.io to determine gender. A probability value of 0.6 or higher was accepted for gender determination.

Results: Initially, female and male representation was nearly equal and eventually became equal by the final year. In 2016 there were 29 total participants in the meetings with 16 (55%) males, and 13 (45%) females. In 2021, there were 28 participants with 14 (50%) males and 14 (50%) females present. We also investigated representation across four regions: West, Midwest, Northeast, and South. In 2016, 16 states were represented; the West and Northeast regions had the highest representation with 8 (30%) participants. The South was less represented with 7 (26%) participants and the Midwest even more so with 4 (15%) participants. Regional participation increased in 2021 with a total of 19 states being represented. We found that the Midwest and West had the most representatives with 7 (27%) participants each while the South and Northeast had 6 (23%) participants each.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the NIH has improved gender representation within the TWD-A case study. We also found that while geographical representation improved over time, many states remain underrepresented.