Participación de la mujer en publicaciones periódicas científicas: tendencias en la pediatría latinoamericana

introduction. women's participation in three important south american pediatric journals was evaluated. methods. all the articles published in archivos argentinos de pediatría, jornal de pediatria and revista chilena de pediatría for the years 1985, 1995 and 2005, were reviewed. the gender of the first and last author, and the total number of authors by gender was analyzed from the selected articles. results. a total of 729 articles were identified. the proportion of women authors significantly increased (1985= 38.0%, 1995= 42.3% y 2005= 48.0%) (p= 0.00002), as the participation as first author (1985= 27.4%, 1995= 34.3% y 2005= 42.8%) (p= 0.0002). we did not find the same trend with women as last authors (1985= 35.8%, 1995= 29.4% y 2005= 38.1%) (p= 0.3). conclusions. the proportion of women as authors has significantly increased in the last 20 years achieving similar proportion to men. nevertheless, women participation in preeminent places is still limited.