Introduction: The Cochrane Collaboration aims to minimise bias in reviews, but we may be creating or sustaining biases in the way we organise ourselves. First, many contributors have a background in medicine or academia, and both these professions have traditionally discriminated against women. Second, the ethos of the Collaboration depends on individuals making considerable efforts on top of their existing jobs over long periods of time. This is likely to discriminate against women, as they are more likely to be the main carers of children and have less flexibility to work outside office hours. Third, the Collaboration is heavily dependent on networking; in the workplace, this is traditionally a male practice. These and similar mechanisms may also cause imbalance in the participation of other groups, including people from developing countries.

Objectives: We sought evidence for this potential bias in a gender analysis of editorial teams and reviewers in the Cochrane Collaboration.

Methods: Cochrane Editorial teams, as outlined in disk issue 2 for 1999, were analysed in relation to gender. We calculated the proportion of Co-ordinating Editors, Editors and Co-ordinators that were women by Collaborative Review Group. We sampled completed reviews, and extracted similar data about the contact reviewer for each review sampled. At the same time, we sought information about possible indicators of inequity in relation to contributors from developing countries, and from countries where English is not the first language. We also encouraged the Cochrane Colloquium organisers to accept this abstract on the basis of the question, without knowing what the results show.

Results:

Discussion: