Program shows need for increased efforts to introduce more female mentors in academia

Key takeaways:

• Women chose female mentors more often.
• The availability of female mentors is limited.

Although most male and female physician-scientist students chose male research mentors, female students chose female mentors more often, according to findings published in Journal of Clinical and Translational Science.

The findings additionally indicate a need for increased efforts to introduce students to more female physician-scientist mentors, researchers concluded.

Diversity in mentorship

Despite progress toward gender equity in academic medicine over the years, female physician-scientists represent only 20% of editors-in-chief at top-ranked medical journals and are less likely to be grant-awardees or in positions of leadership, according to Ashti Shah, BS, and Rashmi J. Rao, both medical students in the Physician Scientist Training Program at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

“As aspiring female physician-scientists, we have found ourselves in a unique environment that gave us insight into overcoming the gender gap in academic medicine,” they wrote.

The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Physician Scientist Training Program is a 5-year longitudinal research training program for medical students, of which 58% of students, both past and present, have been female, according to Shah and Rao.

“Through applicant demographics and matriculation serendipity, our [current training program] class of 11 students is 81% female,” they wrote. “As we sit in a female-majority classroom, we asked the question: What empowers us to pursue a career in academic medicine, despite the challenges we may face as women in the field?”

Shah and Rao sought to examine whether gender concordance between mentor and mentee helps to increase student self-confidence in becoming successful physician-scientists.

They assessed data from the training program over the years and found that both male (42%) and female (58%) students chose male research mentors (66%) more often than female mentors.

However, female students chose female mentors more often than male students (31% vs. 21%).

“[This suggests] women may prefer female mentors, but the availability of these R01-funded, primarily MD or MD-PhD mentors is the limiting factor,” Shah and Rao wrote. “This highlights the need for the [Physician Scientist Training Program] to increase the number of female physician-scientist mentors that students are introduced to, formally through classes or otherwise.”

The training program aims to address this limitation by encouraging students to develop a diverse set of mentors, according to Shah and Rao.

“Our program encourages students to develop a diverse set of mentors including academic, clinical, personal and lifestyle mentors whose range of expertise help guide us through the demands of academia, work and life,” they wrote. “While a single mentor may not perfectly fit our needs, curating a set of mentors who guide us in different domains gives us the structural support and confidence that we can be successful female physician-scientists...Introducing students to multiple mentors helps to circumvent the gap in high-achieving female mentors.”

Elevator pitch

Another challenge faced by women in the field is that they are perceived as significantly less ambitious and driven than men, whereas self-promoting women who showcase their ambition and drive have decreased social acceptance, according to Shah and Rao.

“In the Physician Scientist Training Program, we have learned to comfortably self-promote our accomplishments in competitive environments with help from executive coaches,” they wrote. “This exercise has found a unique place in practicing our elevator-pitches. In addition to preparing our own pitch, we also practice giving our peers’ elevator pitch to the rest of the class. This teaches us how to promote our own work, while encouraging us to promote each other’s work in group settings. We have extended these practices to lab meetings, clinical rotations, and conferences. Collaborative self-promotion limits competition and allows us to maintain our social acceptance, while also advancing our careers...We are convinced that fostering relationships with a diverse set of mentors and exercises to increase self- and peer promotion [is] central to creating a level playing field in academia.”