profession
Women face obstacles in path to medical school deanships
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Aug. 13, 2012
Despite an increasing number of female medical school students and faculty, few women advance to the level of dean, says an article in the August Academic Medicine.
Researchers analyzed data from the Assn. of American Medical Colleges on 534 full and interim deans appointed from 1980 to 2006. Of those, 38 were women and 496 were men, said the study (link).
Researchers found that women took longer to advance in academic medicine and had shorter tenures than men. Only two women were appointed to deanships in the 1980s, and 12 were appointed in the 1990s. But from 2000-04, 24 women became deans, making up 12.8% of deans appointed during those years.
Female deans were more likely to be found at less research-intensive institutions and more likely than men to specialize in pediatrics, family medicine and pathology. Half of the 38 female deans appointed during the study period served at historically black, Hispanic or community-based medical schools.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/08/13/prbf0813.htm.