Strategies | Actions |
Build a culture of awareness, excellence and inclusivity | Embrace diverse views and diverse people, leading to better research and outcomes. Addressing gender bias through open discussions. Educate faculties on the impact of gender bias.23 Open and candid discussions about gender bias can help shift the focus to evaluating the quality of work conducted in science and medicine, rather than focusing on the practitioner’s gender. This may create solutions to address bias rather than perpetuating it through silence. |
Improve gender representation and work–life balance in academia | |
Ensure equal representation of male and female research participants.23 | |
Provide secure, long-term employment opportunities for early-career academics, and ensure that they have access to equal parental leave, support for dual-career relationships, part-time work options, and affordable, high-quality childcare. Additionally, consider organising family-friendly conferences that can accommodate attendees with caregiving responsibilities.24 | |
Diversify the applicant pool through initiatives such as training search committees.23 | |
Support and promote professional growth through mentoring, networking and development opportunities, particularly for women faculty.23 | |
Promote a healthy work–life balance by discouraging a culture of 24/7 work and encouraging employees to prioritise their well-being.24 | |
Foster a problem-solving environment in which colleagues can support each other and work as a team, increasing motivation, efficiency and health.24 | |
Promote female inclusion in sports medicine | Provide diversity and inclusion training for athletes, coaches and other staff.25 Provide career coaching, mentorship and opportunities for growth as practitioners and in leadership positions. |
Hold leaders accountable for driving business practices and clinics that improve diversity. | |
Encourage diversity and inclusion in leadership positions within sports medicine organisations and address gender bias in hiring and promotion practices.25 | |
Implement intentional allyship strategies to address speaker gender inequity.25 | |
Conduct further research through an intersectional lens to examine factors leading to over-representation of white men in SEM25 | |
Enhance female inclusion in research, publications, and conferences | Consider diversity at all stages of research and publication, including among author groups and peer reviewers.25 |
Reflect on the reasons behind the gender disparity in acceptance rates of scientific work, and explore the possibility of implementing gender-blind review processes.24 | |
Ensure diversity at sport and exercise medicine conferences, increasing the representation of women and gender diverse people as speakers and attendees.26 | |
Recognise the benefits of greater diversity | Acknowledge that greater diversity benefits both clinicians and patients, bringing different qualities, skills and experience to the table.25 Female providers are preferred by female athletes for sexual health problems and by both male and female athletes for psychosocial health issues.27 Female physicians have lower mortality rates for their patients.28 |
Enhance the use of enabling technology | Promote the empowerment of women through information and communications technology.29 |
Distribute work equally | Ensure that work is distributed equally across genders. Do not overload women.24 |
Implement anonymous reporting platforms and expert commentary to address bias in SEM settings | Initiatives like #SpeakUpOrtho provide a platform for anonymously sharing experiences of microaggressions, bullying, harassment, discrimination and retaliation. Expert commentary can help prevent the perpetuation of these behaviours.30 |
SEM, sport and exercise medicine.