A group discussion was held during the XXXIII Colombian Congress of Anesthesiology under the title of "Women as pioneers and leaders in anesthesiology" in which the topic of discussion was the gender gap and its social and cultural backdrop.¹ Based on the National Higher Education Information System we reviewed the number of enrolled students, by gender, in the 21 programs available in the country for the period between 2007 and 2017 (Fig. 1). During the first 3 years of this analysis (2007-2009), 86 women were enrolled (37%), while the number increased to 156 (43%) during the last 3 years, suggesting a reduction in the gap. The study by Rosselli et al² mentions a proportion of 24% of women trained as anesthetists during the 1990 to 1999 decade.

Source: Authors.

Figure 1 Number of students enrolled, by gender, between 2007 and 2017. 

Although there is a gender gap in other specialties,³ with the growing numbers of women attending medical school, this gap is shrinking in specialized medicine. In Colombia, as in the United States,⁴ the gender gap, at least in anesthesiology, will soon be a thing of the past.