I appreciate that @AnnalsofEM (study led by Amy Kaji, Richelle Cooper, and others) took a deep dive into gender bias in first authorship, peer review, and the editorial board. Much progress to be made... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064419303981?dgcid=raven_sd_via_email (1/)

Women hold 1 of 10 senior editorial positions, 26% of other editorial board positions, and were 29% of peer reviewers. A similar gap as we are used to seeing with more women in the "lower" positions and fewer in the higher. (2/)

Women represented 28% of first authors in 2018 -- a number that has not changed since 2015. Of most concern to me--as something under immediate and direct control of @AnnalsofEM leaders--women represented only 21% of those invited by editors for editorials. (3/)

My suspicion is that this finding of so few women invited for editorials has to do with the whole range of primarily unconscious bias that leads men to be identified more readily as "leaders" in research fields (4/)

The finding is both believable and disheartening to me as a woman researcher in emergency medicine. I'm glad @AnnalsofEM is paying attention and hope the disparities in editorial invitations stops immediately. (5/)

The article and accompanying editorial by Dr. Callahan talk about next steps. One focus is on increasing the pool of women who do peer review. I'm of mixed views on this. Good: yes, we need to expand that pipeline. (6/)

Bad: peer review is really a service. In itself it doesn't help much w/promotion for those on academic tenure tracks. Research has shown that women (& underrepresented minorities) are already asked to perform more than their share of "uncompensated" service work in academia (7/)

Honestly, as a young(ish) woman on tenure track trying to write papers, get grants, do a bunch of mentoring, and raise a family, the decision to spend time doing peer review needs to be balanced carefully. I say yes a lot, but I say no a lot too. (8/)

Efforts to increase women peer reviewers should acknowledge these realities; I'm not sure the best solutions. But I do know that increasing the "pipeline" of women entering medicine overall hasn't translated to seeing equity in leadership positions. (9/)

I would expect the same to be true when it comes to journal service and publishing. End of my thoughts for now except to note that I truly applaud and appreciate @AnnalsofEM for taking such a thoughtful dive into this issue!