Influences for Gender Disparity in Academic Psychiatry in the United States

Abstract

IntroductionAcademic undertakings, including research, lead to career progression. However, the career paths of female psychiatrists appear to diverge significantly from that of their male counterparts. This article reviews the pervasiveness of the trend of women being less likely to pursue active research in psychiatry. In addition, we examine the correlation between academic rank and research productivity.MethodsWe searched the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database (FREIDA) to identify training programs for psychiatry. A total of 5234 psychiatrists met our inclusion criteria. The gender, academic rank, research work, and h-index of faculty members were compared. The ratio of women reaching senior ranks as compared to men was also calculated. The Scopus database was used to determine the h-index of the individuals included in this study. Data analysis was done with SPSS 22.0 Release 2013 (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests were used where required, with the P-value set at less than 0.05.ResultsIn our study sample, 2181 (42%) of the psychiatrists were women. However, according to the information obtained from the websites of 23 programs, few women reached higher ranks, full professorship, or positions such as the chairperson of a program, and only 9% of women achieved the designation of chairperson of the psychiatry department, with men representing the other 91%. Higher academic rank correlated with higher h-index. A statistically-significant difference between the genders in terms of h-index was found for the assistant professor rank as well. However, this difference was not observed at the level of an associate professor.ConclusionsDespite adequate representation of women in the academic workforce in psychiatry, there appears to be a discrepancy in the research productivity of the two genders. This study highlights the need for targeted interventions to address gender disparities in academic psychiatry.

Academic Gender Disparity in Orthopedic Surgery in Canadian Universities

“…Thus, we cannot make any conclusion on gender bias or systemic oppression of a group. Academic psychiatry in the United States is also a male-dominated specialty and showed similar trends to our study: women held lower H-index scores and were at lower academic positions [4].…”

“…These studies found that women were a minority in the academic practice, were at the lower rungs of academic ranks, were disproportionally represented in leadership positions, had lower research productivity and lower H-index scores when compared to men. Similar results were also found in psychiatry and dermatology [4,5]. This suggests that not only is the number of women in a specialty the marker for equality and equity but also their ability to progress academically.…”

“…Our methodology has been validated in several recent publications. [1][2][3][4][5]9] We obtained a list of orthopedic programs to gather the academic faculty members of each orthopedic department. The Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) website enlists a total of 17 university hospitals that offer orthopedic training programs.…”

“…In the census of 2017-2018, the number of female graduates had grown to 56%, indicating that the proportion of women in medical schools had increased significantly over the last 30 years. However, recent research has shown that subspecialties of radiology, psychiatry, and dermatology still remain male-dominated [1][2][3][4][5]. Currently, only 0.6% of female graduates choose orthopedic surgery residency in America and only 7.6% of orthopedic surgery residents are women [6,7].…”

Psychiatric Genomics Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey of Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Researchers

“…This augments the already disproportionate burden of domestic and emotional labor shouldered by female academics (Brubaker, 2020; Jolly et al, 2014; Rao, 2019). Other studies confirm this observation including a disproportionate number of male first authors in papers submitted to journals on COVID-19 (Andersen et al, 2020), journal submissions and productivity in general (Viglione, 2020), and projections of serious interruptions of career progress for women that could adversely affect progress toward gender equity in academe (Sheikh et al, 2018).…”