Leadership development initiatives needed to dull gender biases for medical school deans
Key takeaways:
- Volunteers reported substantive gender differences in their paths to deanship.
- Women deans reported having to work harder to advance compared with men.
U.S. women medical school deans reported expectations of being more proactive, participating in external leadership development programs and confronting biases during the search process vs. their male counterparts, according to a study.
The lack of support received by women may lead to burnout and attrition, which could affect the composition of future generations of medical school deans, researchers concluded.
‘Countless narratives’
“Countless narratives of women leaders in academic medicine have sought to be dean of a medical school, were invited to interviews, and then did not advance further in the search process,” Maya S. Iyer, MD, MEd, pediatric emergency medicine physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, told Healio. “These stories made our team want to understand if women have to apply more often for and take longer to attain deanships. Moreover, we wanted to discover what were the barriers that prevented advancing to the highest leadership role in academic medicine.
“Qualitative research, such as ours, is so important to conduct because we learn from others’ lived experiences,” Iyer continued. “There are so many themes and nuances that emerge from listening and sharing stories that become helpful when trying to understand gender bias and how to cultivate the next generation of leaders in medicine.”
Researchers conducted a qualitative study to better understand the differences in the path to medical school deanship position between women and men.
Between June 15 and Nov. 9, 2023, researchers solicited and interviewed 34 volunteers from the roster of Association of American Medical Colleges Council of Deans on various topics associated with number of applications for deanships, prior leadership roles, leadership development, personal factors and career trajectories. They recruited women deans first, followed by men appointed to their deanships at a similar time to their women counterparts.
Investigators coded interviews and extracted themes through conventional content analysis, and elicited career and leadership development experiences via a semistructured interview guide.
Gender differences
Overall, 67.6% of deans reported practicing a medicine-based specialty or subspecialty.
Results showed no statistically significant differences between women and men in years to attain deanship (mean, 2.7 years for women vs. mean, 3.7 years for men), years as dean (mean, 5.7 years vs. 6 years), highest salary during career (mean, $525,769 vs. $416,923) or medical school rankings (mean, 315.5 vs. 480.5).
However, volunteers reported substantive gender differences in their paths to deanship. For example, women deans reported having to work harder to advance compared with men. Women also reported receiving less support and opportunities for leadership positions by their own institutions. Consequently, women reported seeking leadership development from external sources, and women deans experienced gender bias when working with search firms.
“Sheryl Sandburg’s quote, ‘Men are promoted based on potential, while women are promoted based on accomplishments,’ illustrates what we found in our study — that men deans were more commonly asked early in their careers to assume foundational leadership roles that provided steppingstones to the position of dean,” Iyer said. “Men deans also more often received spontaneous mentorship and sponsorship that greatly cultivated their leadership development and portfolio, whereas women deans’ career paths did not receive similar career cultivation and they often had to seek out opportunities for themselves.”
‘Be persistent’
The findings suggest the need for institutions and organizations to direct efforts to fostering leadership development toward aspiring women leaders as a way to mitigate gender bias, according to Iyer.
“Moreover, these efforts should also focus on mid-career women, who are generally at a vulnerable point in their careers because of waning professional attention and support, and are at risk of leaving medicine,” she said. “There is still so much work to do to advance the gender equity needle in academic medicine.”
One key factor to realize is that gender equity efforts should not exist in a vacuum, Iyer added.
“Understanding how to be an effective ally, building national allyship programs, and scholarship in this area is needed in academic medicine, especially to support and promote women,” she said. “Echoing the sentiment of the women deans in this study — be persistent, seek out connections, advocate and negotiate for yourself, and make sure that as you rise, you are also bringing up those behind you.”
For more information:
Maya S. Iyer, MD, MEd, can be reached at maya.iyer@nationwidechildrens.org.
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