Women’s participation is steadily growing in medical schools, but they are still not sufficiently represented in cardiology, particularly in cardiology leadership positions. We present the contemporary distribution of women leaders in cardiology departments in the World Health Organization European region.

Between August and December 2020 we applied purposive sampling to collect data and analyse gender distribution of heads of cardiology department in university/third level hospitals in 23 countries: Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, North Macedonia, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Age, cardiology subspecialty, and number of scientific publications were recorded for a subgroup of cardiology leaders for whom data was available. A total of 849 cardiology departments were analysed. Women leaders were only 30% (254/849) and were younger than their men counterpart (♀ 52.2 ± 7.7 years-old versus ♂ 58.1 ± 7.6 years-old, p = 0.00001). Most women leaders were non-interventional experts (♀ 82% versus ♂ 46%, p < 0.00001), and had significantly fewer scientific publications than men [♀ 16 (IQR 2-41) publications versus ♂ 44 (IQR 9-175) publications, p < 0.00001].

Across the World Health Organization European region, there is a significant gender disparity in cardiology leadership positions. Fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace is a priority in order to achieve the full potential and leverage the full talents of both women and men.