Gender disparities in leadership and scholarly productivity of academic hospitalists

Abstract

BACKGROUND Gender disparities still exist for women in academic medicine but may be less evident in younger cohorts. Hospital medicine is a new field, and the majority of hospitalists are <41 years of age. OBJECTIVE To determine whether gender disparities exist in leadership and scholarly productivity for academic hospitalists and to compare the findings to academic general internists. DESIGN Prospective and retrospective observational study. SETTING University programs in the United States. MEASUREMENTS Gender distribution of (1) academic hospitalists and general internists, (2) division or section heads for both specialties, (3) speakers at the 2 major national meetings of the 2 specialties, and (4) first and last authors of articles from the specialties' 2 major journals RESULTS We found equal gender representation of hospitalists and general internists who worked in university hospitals. Divisions or sections of hospital medicine and general internal medicine were led by women at 11/69 (16%) and 28/80 (35%) of university hospitals, respectively (P = 0.008). Women hospitalists and general internists were listed as speakers on 146/557 (26%) and 291/580 (50%) of the presentations at national meetings, respectively (P < 0.0001), first authors on 153/464 (33%) and 423/895 (47%) publications, respectively (P < 0.0001), and senior authors on 63/305 (21%) and 265/769 (34%) articles, respectively (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Despite hospital medicine being a newer field, gender disparities exist in leadership and scholarly productivity. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2015;10:481–485. © 2015 Society of Hospital Medicine

The Career Advising Program: A Strategy to Achieve Gender Equity in Academic Medicine

“…, 2 Given that women now constitute half of US medical school graduates, identifying strategies to support their career development in order to capitalize on the untapped leadership potential of this large segment of our health care workforce is critical. Other industries have addressed similar gender gaps in part by creating formal sponsorship programming.…”

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“…Yet 2 articles in this month's Journal of Hospital Medicine prove that even our new field faces age-old problems. Although women comprise half of all academic hospitalist and general internal medicine faculty, Burden et al 2 showed that female hospitalists are less likely than male hospitalists to be division or section heads of hospital medicine, speakers at national meetings, and first or last authors on both research publications and editorials. This is made more concerning given that women are more likely to choose academic hospital medicine careers, 3 as they represent one-third of all hospitalists but half of the academic hospitalist workforce.…”

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