FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 13, 2000
CONTACT: Erin Lucero
(804) 828-6605
[email protected]
www.vcu.edu/uns
WOMEN'S VALUES MAY INFLUENCE CAREER PROGRESS IN FIELD OF ACADEMIC MEDICINE
RICHMOND, Va. -- A Virginia Commonwealth University study offers new perspectives on factors that might influence women's progress to academic medicine's highest ranks. The study, published in the current issue of Academic Medicine, has found that male and female faculty members differ in how they value career accomplishments like scholarship, leadership and national recognition -- necessary items for promotion at most academic medical centers.
The VCU findings come in the wake of a study published in the Feb. 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, which found that despite increasing numbers of women at all levels of academic medicine, women continue to lag behind men in the profession's senior ranks.
"Women on medical school faculties face important obstacles to career development and promotion," said Lenore M. Buckley, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at VCU. "External factors like family responsibilities can affect career success. But not enough attention has been paid to whether internal factors -- such as a woman's attitude toward scholarship and professional recognition -- can also have a role."
Buckley's study found that women's and men's perceptions of success differ and could have an impact on the promotion process. While women tend to value patient care and teaching, elements that contribute to a medical school's local mission, men are more likely to value accomplishments such as national visibility, leadership and scholarship, career components that are crucial in the promotion process.
Promotion criteria at most academic medical centers were developed many years ago when the major mission was research, explained Buckley. "America's health-care environment has changed, and medical schools should reflect that in their reward structures and recognize innovative patient care and new clinical programs in addition to scholarship and national contributions," said Buckley. Unless that happens, it's likely that there will continue to be an imbalance in the proportion of female faculty who reach the highest ranks and assume leadership roles."
The study findings are based on 567 responses to questionnaires that were mailed in 1997 to 918 male and female faculty at VCU's School of Medicine and its associated Veterans Affairs Medical Center. About a third of the 918 faculty who received questionnaires were women.
There are now more than 20,000 women faculty in U.S. medical schools, but male professors still outnumber women by a ratio of 10-to-1. While the national percentage of women entering faculty positions at academic medical centers has significantly increased in the last two decades, the proportion of women at the level of professor has remained steady at 11 percent.
The Association of American Medical Colleges has led a national move to increase the number of female leaders in academic medicine, and VCU, like some other schools, has established a faculty organization that furthers the professional goals of women physicians and scientists. VCU's faculty organization actively educates female faculty about the tenure process and also has initiated discussion over whether tenure criteria should be modified.
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