Gender Participation by Sport in Published Sports and Exercise Medicine Original Research

Background: Prior research has shown that there are fewer women than men participants in sports and exercise medicine research. Purpose: To determine how participation in sports and exercise medicine research has changed and compares between women and men, overall and by sport of participants. Study Design: Meta-analysis; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: The authors identified original research articles published in 2020 in 3 influential sports and exercise medicine journals ( British Journal of Sports Medicine , American Journal of Sports Medicine , and Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise ). Articles were analyzed as a group overall and within subsets distinguishing sport-specific articles. For the complete set and each subset, the pooled proportions of participants by gender and the mean percentage of women participants per article were calculated. Results: A total of 579 articles were included in the analysis. There were 1,693,304 participants pooled across all articles, of whom 54.4% were men and 45.6% were women. There was a mean of 37% women participants per article. Among all articles that included athletes of a single sport, 80% of the pooled participants were men and 20% were women, with a mean of 19.6% women participants per article. Conclusion: There were fewer women than men participants in this sample overall and especially in sport-specific articles.