Objective: p53 is a tumor suppressor gene and is involved in the etiology of ovarian cancer. Studies investigating the associations between the p53 codon 72 polymorphism and ovarian cancer risk showed conflicting results. We performed this meta-analysis from eligible studies to evaluate this purported relationship. Methods: This meta-analysis was performed from 9 case-control studies, including 825 ovarian cases and 1073 controls. The fixed and random effect models were used to estimate the odds ratios(ORs) for various contrasts of this polymorphism. Results: The combined results based on all studies showed that a significantly decreased risk was associated with the variant Pro/Pro genotype, compared with Arg/Pro+Arg/Arg genotypes(OR, 0.70; 95%CI, 0.51~0.95). When stratifying the studies by ethnicity, we found that individuals with the variant genotype Pro/Pro had a significantly decreased risk of ovarian cancer compared with Arg/Arg genotype(OR, 0.43; 95%CI, 0.20~0.89) and Arg/Pro+Arg/Arg genotypes(OR, 0.61; 95%CI, 0.37~0.99) among Africans. Conclusion: This meta-analysis suggests that the p53 codon 72 polymorphism may contribute to genetic susceptibility to ovarian cancer. More studies based on larger sample size should be performed to confirm the findings.