Thread by @nephondemand

1/ Welcome to the Saturday Poster session at #KidneyWk. On behalf of Hector and Edgar, I’d like to welcome you to our tweet thread on • Gender disparities in #SoMe and #MedEd•. You can view our poster (&🗣w/us) live TODAY from 10-12 PM (#27) or learn more about our work below

2/ #SoMe is exploding in medicine & #Nephrology leads the way in many metrics & most certainly in #SoMe research. Many #SoMe *users* are becoming active #SoMe *educators* & share valuable educational information to the larger online community.
datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/…
#KidneyWk

3/ Concurrently, there is a greater push to equalize the way we share knowledge. Gender is an area in need of equalization. More men than women are offered presenting &/or moderating opportunities. This imbalance negatively effects both female *and* male learners. #KidneyWk

4/ The gender disparity adds an unjustified hurdle when female scientists want to share their scientific work. Intentional or not, individual &/or institutional gender imbalances suppress the collective ingenuity & creativity that female scientists can share with us. #KidneyWk

5/ Meanwhile, male scientists are adversely effected as well. Collectively suppressing the body of scientific work that female investigators create ↓ our (male) exposure to new ideas & innovations. Gender imbalances slow our evolution into astute critical thinkers. #KidneyWk

6/ So 3 guys wanted to know how gender imbalance does (or doesn't) operate in the #SoMe #MedEd space. To do that, we needed data to analyze. Since 2011 @NODanalytics has collected tweets from the #NephTwitter community (>250K). With this data…#kidneywk
datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/…

7/ …we needed to focus on the most educational conference in #NephTwitter. We selected @ASNKidney #kidneywk; the largest #nephrology conference on the planet & the first adopter of #SoMe education amongst all conference organizers. #Kidneywk felt like a natural meeting to study.

8/ Off we went into a deep dive of the tweet data from #KidneyWk 2011-2018. First we performed the obligatory analysis of female v male #SoMe educators over time. Then we took a deeper dive to identify what else is (or isn’t) happening that sustains gender imbalance in #MedEd.

9/ We are reaching number *parity* with each iteration of #KidneyWk. In 2018, nearly 4 in 10 #SoMe educators were women. That’s a big deal considering that 31% of the @ASNKidney membership was female in that year (props to our bro @edgarvlermamd for scoring this data).

10/ And there ends the story, right? Just march along unto ~50% of all #SoMe educators are women and we’ll have balance. We are increasing female representation within #KidneyWk (that’s good), but are we really learning from our female colleagues? Alas the answer is likely *no*.

11/ More than educator numbers or tweet impressions, true #SoMe learning comes from interactions. Bidirectional communication between male and female educators/scientists is needed so that all parties can benefit from a complete #kidneywk learning experience.

12/ To look at interactions, we revisited the data and identified how male & female scientists converse with each other at #kidneywk. We created *A→B* pairs in which A represents a group that •started• a 💬
and B represents the group that was •invited• to join the 💬

13/ 6% of #KidneyWk conversations started by a male educator will have an invitation (tag) for a female colleague to join. Compare that to 23% male→male interactions.

Female scientists are the opposite: nearly double their invitations go to male colleagues than female ones.

14/ These low numbers (M→F 6% | F→M 11%) create educational islands. Islands (Right figure, blue ➜) are rich with information but isolated from the remainder of the #KidneyWk community. Those outside an island won’t learn from it despite the number of people inside the island.

15/ The interaction map (Left) shows how males & females converse at #KidneyWk (2011-2018). Inter-gender communication = black lines. It's hard to see them because they rarely exist, despite an increasing % of female #SoMe educators.
High res image: facebook.com/groups/2112546…

16/ Thus gender balance (& its benefits) isn’t about numbers of female scientists in #KidneyWk alone. We need more lines of communication (black lines) between males & females to share the ingenuity, creativity, & discovery that each group brings to #kidneyWk.
How do we do that?

17/ Identify people who can contribute to our learning. I’ve listed the top female #KidneyWk #SoMe educators since 2011. Reach out to them when you’ve got a question or want to share knowledge. For example, I invite the following educators to help me in my learning…

18/..
@renalpages: dialysis questions
@kidneydoc101: GN & especially lupus
@katiekwonMD: private practice insights
@divyabajpai: medical visualizations

Be active and know the smart people to invite to your discussions..everyone wins and learns that way.

19/ There you have it: our poster presentation in 19 tweets. Please visit us at SA-PO #27 today between 10-12 PM to discuss gender (dis)parity in #KidneyWk #MedEd. Thanks for reading and fighting for gender balance in #nephrology education.
(pic has our Twitter handles)