Background: Governments, organizations responsible for scientific policies, universities and recently The Cochrane Collaboration (CC) encourage equity of gender favouring equal participation and full integration of women in all aspects of the scientific profession. Publication in biomedical journals can be considered an important measure of scientific productivity. Few studies have attempted to quantify the gender distribution of authors of published research, none referred to systematic reviews (SRs). Objectives: To determine whether CC supports gender equity by promoting SR production by female authors. Specifically, we compared Cochrane SRs and those published in the major biomedical journals (non-Cochrane) in terms of first and last gender authors. Methods: Two reviewers assessed first and last listed authors’ gender for all the new reviews published during 2008 in The Cochrane Library and in the PubMed core clinical journals, the latter identified using ‘meta-analysis’ as publication type. Gender was recorded by inspection of author’s first name, internet searches and contacting authors. Comparison of proportions were carried out using the chi-square test with a conventional level of statistical significance (p < 0.05). Results: Data were extracted from a total of 320 Cochrane and 362 non-Cochrane SRs published in 2008. A higher proportion of first and last female authors for Cochrane SRs compared to non-Cochrane was found (first: 50% vs. 37%; p=0.002; last: 31% vs. 20%; p=0.005). The Cochrane SRs also report more frequently the first-last pair female author with respect to non-Cochrane (61% vs. 39%). Conclusion: These data suggest a greater involvement of female authors in the production of Cochrane SRs compared with those published in the major medical journals. We will investigate time trend in female authorship by repeating this analysis on reviews published in 2004 and 2000.