Can the Language of Tenure Criteria Influence Women's Academic Advancement? (original) (raw)
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Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2021
BACKGROUND: According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, women comprise 26% of full professors and 19% of medical school department chairs. African American and Latino faculty comprise 4.6% of full professors and 6.9% of department chairs. OBJECTIVE: Because of the lack of representation of women and racial/ethnic minority faculty at the highest levels of academic medicine, this study examines the perceptions of barriers to advancement by men and women academic medical school faculty of differing races and ethnicities to explore potential differences in perceptions by demographic group. DESIGN: Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted between July and September 2017. PARTICIPANTS: In order to give all faculty a chance to participate, faculty of all ranks and specialties were recruited from one southeastern medical school to participate in the study. APPROACH: Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by 3 members of the research team using an inductive approach to thematic analysis. Participants were organized into 4 groups for analysis-underrepresented in medicine (URiM) women, majority women, URiM men, majority men. KEY RESULTS: Sixty-four faculty consented to participate in the study (56.2% women, 34.4% URiM). Subthemes were grouped under three main themes: Perceptions of Barriers to Advancement of Women Faculty, Perceptions of Barriers to Advancement of African American and Latino Faculty, and Perceptions of the Institutional Climate for Diversity. Majority men tended to voice distinctly different perspectives than the other three demographic groups, with the most notable differences between majority men and URiM women. Majority men tended to suggest that the advancement of women and URiM faculty was acceptable or getting better, the lack of URiM faculty in leadership was due mainly to pipeline issues, and women choose not to advance to leadership positions. CONCLUSION: We found that participant gender and race/ethnicity shaped perspectives of medical school faculty advancement in distinct ways. KEY WORDS: ac ade mic ad van ce men t; aca dem ic medic ine ; underrepresented in medicine; women.
Sex and race differences in faculty tenure and promotion
Research in Higher Education
Data from the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty are used to explore sources of the lower representation of women and minorities among tenured than tenure track faculty and among full professors than lower ranking faculty. ...
Hierarchy as a Barrier to Advancement for Women in Academic Medicine
Journal of Women's Health, 2010
Background: Research on barriers to professional advancement for women in academic medicine has not adequately considered the role of environmental factors and how the structure of organizations affects professional advancement and work experiences. This article examines the impact of the hierarchy, including both the organization's hierarchical structure and professionals' perceptions of this structure, in medical school organization on faculty members' experience and advancement in academic medicine. Methods: As part of an inductive qualitative study of faculty in five disparate U.S. medical schools, we interviewed 96 medical faculty at different career stages and in diverse specialties, using in-depth semistructured interviews, about their perceptions about and experiences in academic medicine. Data were coded and analysis was conducted in the grounded theory tradition. Results: Our respondents saw the hierarchy of chairs, based on the indeterminate tenure of department chairs, as a central characteristic of the structure of academic medicine. Many faculty saw this hierarchy as affecting inclusion, reducing transparency in decision making, and impeding advancement. Indeterminate chair terms lessen turnover and may create a bottleneck for advancement. Both men and women faculty perceived this hierarchy, but women saw it as more consequential. Conclusions: The hierarchical structure of academic medicine has a significant impact on faculty work experiences, including advancement, especially for women. We suggest that medical schools consider alternative models of leadership and managerial styles, including fixed terms for chairs with a greater emphasis on inclusion. This is a structural reform that could increase opportunities for advancement especially for women in academic medicine.
Reducing Implicit Gender Leadership Bias in Academic Medicine With an Educational Intervention
Academic Medicine, 2016
According to data published in 2014 by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), women represented 47% of students at accredited U.S. MD-granting medical schools, 46% of participants in residency programs, and 38% of full-time medical school faculty. 1 Despite these impressive numbers, women remain underrepresented in the upper echelons of academic medicine. Only 34% of associate professors and 21% of full professors are women. 1 Further, among the leadership in academic health centers (AHCs), only 16% of deans and 15% of department chairs are women. 1 Given these numbers, investigators have estimated that gender parity at the full professor level will not be achieved for at least 40 years. 2 Prior researchers have attributed the lack of advancement and the attrition of women faculty to unsupportive work environments, active discrimination, personal choices, institutional barriers, and a leaky pipeline. 3-11 Consequently, medical schools have established mentoring, networking, leadership, and coaching resources to recruit, advance, and retain women faculty. Even though women avail themselves of these resources in large numbers, 12 their presence among higher-ranked faculty and leaders is growing very slowly, suggesting that additional mechanisms may interfere with advancement. 13 Gender biases that favor men over women may influence the hiring, promotion, and retention of women faculty in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine. 6,14 Importantly, such biases need not arise from explicitly avowed beliefs. 15,16 Both men and women implicitly associate science with men more than they do with women. 17,18 Implicit biases may play a role in decision-making processes relevant to the engagement of women in academic leadership. 19 For example, studies on hiring suggest that men and women show a stronger preference for male candidates (e.g., for fathers over mothers)-even when all application materials are identical. 20 Similarly, an analysis of 61 studies comparing male and female leaders suggests that a bias favors male leaders. 21 Curiously, when women enact a "masculine style" of leadership (e.g., if the female leaders are autocratic and directive), they receive the lowest ratings among men and women leaders, presumably because their agentic behavior violates the social norms and expectations for women. 22 These findings suggest that subtle gender biases are pervasive, and we believe that, in turn, the pervasiveness of these biases calls for the design of interventions to increase women in academic leadership roles. Evidence indicates that implicit bias can be alleviated by education that both increases awareness and provides bias reduction strategies. 23-26 Prior studies, notably those that have evaluated the Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) and the Science and Technology Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence
Widening the Lens on Gender and Tenure: Looking Beyond the Academic Labor Market
Women's tenure rates are widely and justifiably considered critical indicators of women's status within academia. In this article, however, we question the meaning of this indicator. We find that Ph.D. career path data show women's likelihood of getting tenure is equal to or better than men's in fields dominated by men. Most literature on gender and tenure focuses on family/work balance and academic climate issues, but a review of common labor market explanations in relation to Ph.D. career path data suggests that we need to view the academic labor market as just one segment of the broader labor market. In conclusion, we argue that understanding women's tenure status requires "widening the lens" to include the role of labor market alternatives to academic careers.
Academic Medicine
The influx of women into academic medicine over the past three decades has not been accompanied by equality for male and female faculty in terms of rank attainment, leadership roles, salaries, and treatment by colleagues or superiors. Although the percentage of female faculty in academic medicine has doubled over the last three decades, increasing from 13% in 1967 1 to 27% in 1999, 2 women have not achieved parity with men in academic ranks or tracks. Only 6% of academic departments (170) were headed by women in 1998, and there were only six women deans at U.S. colleges of medicine in 1999. 2 In addition to disparities observed in rank and leader-ship, 3-6 women physicians receive lower salaries than their male colleagues. 4,7-9 Possible explanations for these disparities have included lower productivity of women, 5,8,10 conflict between familial and professional roles for women, 11,12 and academic climates that support gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Most research on gender differences in academic medicine has used U.S. national level data, looking across and within specific disciplines. However, these studies have been hampered by a lack of data on academic track (i.e., tenure versus nontenure) and reliance
PLOS ONE
Underrepresentation of women in senior positions is a persistent problem in universities worldwide, and a wide range of strategies to combat this situation is currently being contemplated. One such strategy is the introduction of a tenure track system, in which decisions to promote scientific staff to higher ranks are guided by a set of explicit and transparent criteria, as opposed to earlier situations in which decisions were based on presumably more subjective impressions by superiors. We examined the effect of the introduction of a tenure track system at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) on male and female promotion rates. We found that chances on being promoted to higher levels were already fairly equal between men and women before the tenure track system was introduced, and improved-more for women than for men-after the introduction of the tenure track system. These results may partly be explained by affirmative actions, but also by the fact that legacy effects of historical discrimination have led to a more competitive female population of scientists. In spite of these outcomes, extrapolations of current promotion rates up to 2025 demonstrate that the equal or even higher female promotion rates do not lead to substantial improvement of the gender balance at higher levels (i.e., associate professor and higher). Since promotion rates are small compared to the total amount of staff, the current distribution of men and women will, especially at higher levels, exhibit a considerable degree of inertia-unless additional affirmative action is taken.
Faculty Hiring and Tenure by Sex and Race: New Evidence from a National Survey
In academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the U.S. professoriate remains disproportionately White and male, despite decades of effort to make hiring and tenure processes more just. To examine the likelihood of a doctorate recipient first obtaining a tenure-track position and then receiving tenure and to investigate the effects of sex and race, we analyzed data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients collected between 1993-2010 (n = 31,370), employing two separate discrete time event history models via logistic regression. In obtaining a tenure-track position, Black and Hispanic doctorate recipients were hired faster than were White doctorates, and Asian doctorate recipients were hired later than White doctorates. Single men and women with a child under six were least likely to be hired. In receiving tenure, Black assistant professors and women assistant professors with a child under six were each at a significant disadvantage.
Retaining Faculty in Academic Medicine: The Impact of Career Development Programs for Women
Journal of women's health (2002), 2016
For more than two decades, national career development programs (CDPs) have addressed underrepresentation of women faculty in academic medicine through career and leadership curricula. We evaluated CDP participation impact on retention. We used Association of American Medical Colleges data to compare 3268 women attending CDPs from 1988 to 2008 with 17,834 women and 40,319 men nonparticipant faculty similar to CDP participants in degree, academic rank, first year of appointment in rank, and home institution. Measuring from first year in rank to departure from last position held or December 2009 (study end date), we used Kaplan-Meier curves; Cox survival analysis adjusted for age, degree, tenure, and department; and 10-year rates to compare retention. CDP participants were significantly less likely to leave academic medicine than their peers for up to 8 years after appointment as Assistant and Associate Professors. Full Professor participants were significantly less likely to leave th...