The Huge Gender Gap in Academic Medicine

Two studies published in the Journal of the American Association find that although women now make up half of all medical school students, there continues to be a large gender gap in medical school faculty and research funding.

One study led by Anupam Jena, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School, found that there were 30,000 women serving on medical school faculties and 61,000 men. For those in full professor posts, 3,600 were women and 17,000 were men. They data also showed that women faculty on average were published less often, were less likely to receive grants from the National Institutes of Health, and to direct clinical research trials.

A second study by led Robert Sege, vice president of Health Resources in Action, a Boston-based foundation, looked at funding in biomedical research. The data showed that for junior faculty members, men received an average of $889,000 to purchase equipment and set up their research laboratories. Women junior faculty members received an average of $350,000. Some 40 percent of male junior faculty member received more than $1 million to establish their laboratories compared to only 12 percent of women junior faculty members.

The first study, “Sex Differences in Academic Rank in US Medical Schools in 2014,” may be accessed here.

The second study, “Sex Differences in Institutional Support for Junior Biomedical Researchers,” may be accessed here.