Study objectives: To investigate gender distribution of US sleep professionals who received major recognition awards over a 40-year period from the 2 national sleep societies: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.
Methods: We reviewed and analyzed the publicly available lists of sleep recognition awards recipients from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society websites. The primary outcome measures were the overall proportion of individual sleep recognition awards given to US men and women sleep professionals and the trend over time (1981-2020) analyzed by decade using the Cochran-Armitage test.
Results: Seven major sleep recognition awards (4 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and 3 by the Sleep Research Society) were identified over 40 years. There were overall 164 individual sleep recognition awards presented by the 2 sleep societies to US sleep professionals, including 136 (82.9%) awarded for men and only 28 (17.1%) awarded for women. The analysis of the sleep recognition awards over time by decade revealed a significant increasing trend (P < .0001) in the proportion of awards recognizing women relative to men, with a progression from 0.0% in the 1980s to 3.4% in the 1990s to 13.1% in the 2000s and to 31.7% in the 2010s.
Conclusions: US women sleep professionals were historically underrepresented in major sleep recognition awards, with a reduction in the gender gap in the last 10 years. The reasons behind gender inequality in sleep recognition awards remain unclear and deserve further investigation.
Citation: Naime S, Karroum EG. Women are underrepresented in major US sleep societies recognition awards. J Clin Sleep Med. 2021;17(8):1665-1673.
Keywords: awards; gender bias; gender disparities; sexism; sleep professionals; sleep societies.
© 2021 American Academy of Sleep Medicine.