Editorial: Women in science—Rheumatology 2021

Abstract

Editorial on the Research Topic Women in science-RheumatologyEven though the proportion of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine has arisen in the last decades, a gender imbalance among conference speakers, editors, academic positions and hiring committees still exists throughout all of these disciplines (1, 2). In fact, it was recently demonstrated that in most scientific fields men comprise more than a half of the workforce, especially at senior levels (3). Rheumatology is a medical discipline that saw a great growth in the last years. Despite the significant contribution provided by women in the research in this field, as underlined in a recent publication (4), the gender imbalance in senior academic and authorship positions is no exception (2, 5). The increase of the number of women in rheumatology is an interesting data that comes also from Arab Countries, as underlined in the first publication of our collection. Ziade et al. described the situation of the women rheumatologists' workforce in the Arab League of Associations for Rheumatology countries, underlying their increasing presence, along with their lower proportion in leadership positions and suggesting that social media platform could help them to assert themselves. In line with this universal need, in the United States, an Association of Women in Rheumatology (AWIR) was founded with the mission to promote the science and practice of rheumatology, foster the advancement and education of women in the field, and advocate access to the highest quality health care, and management of patients with rheumatic diseases . The same purpose is promoted by an Italian women association in rheumatology, "Reumatologhe Donne" (ReDO) .Inspired by these principles in favor of gender equity in rheumatology, the aim of our Research Topic was to offer space to women, who are responsible of the manuscripts of this collection as first or senior authors, giving room to different scientific topics.Women are often proactive in a multidisciplinary team, which is a fundamental need for the cure of multisystemic rheumatic conditions, as demonstrated by the paper of Schmoll et al., in which pneumologists and rheumatologists collaborated in order to cure the rheumatologic long-term complications of cystic fibrosis, or in the papers of Kramer et al., in which a multidisciplinary team studied sicca syndrome, related or not to other autoimmune symptoms, and Carmona-Fernandes et al.

Editorial: Women in science - rheumatology 2023

“…In 2021, a Research Topic to promote the visibility of female researchers in the area of rheumatology was launched ( 9 ), and the same initiative was proposes in 2023, providing an opportunity to increase the dissemination of the results of research led by female scientists. In line with this principle, we included in this Research Topic studies in which women had a leading or senior position, covering various areas.…”