Women in suicide prevention research

Female suicide prevention researchers face barriers thattheir male counterparts do not; the playing field is defi-nitely not level. As four women from different culturalbackgrounds, circumstances, and career stages, we havebeen reflecting on this. In this editorial, we discuss theextent and nature of some of the gender disparities insuicide prevention research and how these might arise. Weexamine how these disparities compare with two othermajor fields (academic medicine, and science, technology,engineering and mathematics, or STEM) and consider theimportance of intersectionality. We provide some insightsfrom our own experiences and conclude with some sug-gestions as to how the playing field might be levelled.