Academic advancement of women in medicine: do socialized gender differences have a role in mentoring?

摘要

During the past 30 years, women have entered academic medicine in increasingly larger numbers. However, fewer women than men have succeeded in advancing in academic rank. Despite numerous studies and reports documenting this failure, progress in correcting this problem has been slower than that predicted by even conservative estimates. In 1985, 10% of female medical school faculty held the rank of full professor. In 2006, 12% of female faculty were full professors. It has taken more than 20 years for the proportion of female faculty who are full professors to increase 2 percentage points. Among male faculty, 30% have consistently held the rank of full professor over the same 20 years. The limited advancement of women in the upper echelons of medicine is not substantially different from that of women in other areas of science, mathematics, and business. Our engineering and business colleagues have described similar issues as they search for greater gender equality in their upper ranks. Of female engineering faculty in the United States, 1% are full professors. In business, the Harvard Business Review has reported that women comprise less than 6% of the uppermost ranks (ie, presidents, executive vice-presidents, chief executive officers, and chief operating officers) of Fortune 500 companies.