Women currently represent nearly half of all medical school graduates and assistant professors at academic institutions. Despite the large pool of women in the academic medicine pipeline, relatively ...few ascend to top leadership positions and women remain grossly underrepresented among full professors, permanent department chairs, and highest-level deans/interim deans. Considerable evidence suggests that the gender imbalance observed at the top tiers of academic medicine is, in part, due to gender differences in promotional rates, with women being promoted more slowly than their male colleagues. The well-documented gender gaps in publications, grant support, recognition awards, speaker invitations, and leadership positions contribute to the slow progression of women in medicine, as promotions committees rely heavily upon these traditional measures of academic success to select candidates for career advancement. Additionally, implicit biases, which have been shown to favor men over women in science and leadership, influence decision-making processes relevant to the promotion of women in academia. With the large number of highly qualified women entering medicine, it is imperative that organizations, academic institutions, and leaders in the medical community address the systemic inequities that are preventing half the workforce from reaching its full potential.
Among U.S. medical school deans, there is a wide gender gap, most prominent at the highest levels. We aimed to discover how well women physicians were represented within the pool of women deans ...compared with the pool of men deans.
A cross-sectional study was performed on 149 allopathic medical schools in the United States. For each school, information was collected on deans' names, titles, genders, and degree(s). Chi-square analyses were performed to determine association between gender and dean ranks.
Of the 2559 deans included from 149 medical schools, 1649 (64.4%) were physicians, and of these, women physicians accounted for 634 (38.4%), a significant under-representation (
< 0.00001). In comparison, the 626 nonphysician doctorate-holders of which women accounted for 291 (46.5%,
= 0.061) were equally represented. Of the 284 deans with bachelor's or master's degrees, women accounted for 180 (63.4%), a significant over-representation (
< 0.00001). This difference was most profound at the lower tier (assistant) dean level. A lower tier physician dean was 1.25 times more likely to be a man than a woman, and a higher tier (dean of medical school, senior associate, vice, or associate) physician dean was 1.16 times more likely to be a man.
Women physicians were under-represented among medical school deans compared with men. This disparity held among lower tier and higher tier deans.
Gender bias and discrimination have profound and far-reaching effects on the health care workforce, delivery of patient care, and advancement of science and are antithetical to the principles of ...professionalism. In the quest for gender equity, medicine, with its abundance of highly educated and qualified women, should be leading the way. The sheer number of women who comprise the majority of pediatricians in the United States suggests this specialty has a unique opportunity to stand out as progressively equitable. Indeed, there has been much progress to celebrate for women in medicine and pediatrics. However, many challenges remain, and there are areas in which progress is too slow, stalled, or even regressing. The fair treatment of women pediatricians will require enhanced and simultaneous commitment from leaders in 4 key gatekeeper groups: academic medical centers, hospitals, health care organizations, and practices; medical societies; journals; and funding agencies. In this report, we describe the 6-step equity, diversity, and inclusion cycle, which provides a strategic methodology to (1) examine equity, diversity, and inclusion data; (2) share results with stakeholders; (3) investigate causality; (4) implement strategic interventions; (5) track outcomes and adjust strategies; and (6) disseminate results. Next steps include the enforcement of a climate of transparency and accountability, with leaders prioritizing and financially supporting workforce gender equity. This scientific and data-driven approach will accelerate progress and help pave a pathway to better health care and science.
Gender-related differences have been found among invited speakers in select professional and medical societies. We examined whether similar disparities existed among keynote speakers, plenary ...speakers, and invited lecturers in a broad range of medical specialty conferences from 2013 to 2017.
A cross-sectional study was performed on 27 U.S. medical specialty conferences for which data were available on plenary speakers, keynote speakers, and/or invited lecturers. For each speaker, gender and degree(s) were determined. Fisher's exact test was performed to compare proportions of women among speakers to Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) physician workforce data on gender distribution.
In aggregate, we identified 246 women among 984 speakers, significantly lower than expected when compared with 2015 AAMC data (25.0% vs. 34.0%;
< 0.00001). Compared with AAMC data reported in 2013, 2015, and 2017, women were significantly underrepresented in 2013 (
= 0.0064) and 2015 (
= 0.00004). In 2017, the proportion of women among invited speakers trended lower than AAMC active women physicians but did not reach significance (
= 0.309). Analysis of individual conference data stratified by year indicated that, while the representation of women among all speakers improved between 2015 and 2017, the representation of women among keynote speakers, plenary speakers, and invited lectureships was variable (including zero levels some years during the study period) and remained lower than expected as compared with workforce data for specific medical specialties.
Evaluating for and improving disparities is recommended to ensure gender equity among invited speakers across all medical specialty conferences.
This cross-sectional, descriptive study analyzes the number of women among physician first authors of articles published in the
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
and
JAMA Dermatology
...across a 5-year period.
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