Academic Women of Note: Ann Chinnis

This post continues our series of interviews with women who have made their mark in academia or have interesting thoughts for those of us in the Ivory Tower. Ann Chinnis, MD, MSHA, describes a nontraditional career path leading from community practice to academic leadership to career coaching. She is now a Certified Master Sherpa Coach and CEO of Matrix Executive Coaching. She can be reached at via email to discuss not only executive coaching but also to informally chat about her journey and yours as well.

Ann Chinnis

Question: Please tell us about your educational and professional background.

I obtained my BS from Yale in Biology and then attended Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA. I stayed there for post -graduate training. I am boarded in Emergency Medicine and worked in a variety of community Emergency Departments (ED) from 1982-1997 in staff and leadership roles.  In 1997 I was recruited to my first academic job at West Virginia University (WVU) as ED Assistant Medical Director. At that time, I was also finishing up a Master’s degree in Health Administration (MSHA) at Virginia Commonwealth University. The finance skills I acquired from my MSHA proved critical to the success of my new department and conferred “business credibility” upon me!  Once at WVU, I moved from Assistant Medical Director to Medical Director to Vice Chair to interim Chair to Chair of Emergency Medicine.

Seven years into my Chair tenure, the Dean asked me to assume Executive Directorship of the WVU Epic project which was just being hatched. This 3-year project involved a clinical transformation of care layered on the implementation of Epic software for the practice plan sites and WVU hospital. I also served as the Associate Dean for clinical informatics. When the implementation came to an end, I decided to return to my home in Virginia to be closer to aging parents who needed care, to enjoy the ocean and to re-enter Emergency Medicine community practice.

How and why did you make the transition to coach?

For a person who was not a techno wiz, leading a health IT project basically wore me out.   When the implementation was done, I was done. I knew that my passion in life was not around optimizing health IT systems, but I had worked myself right into a long-term career with IT!  I looked at my choices at the time: continue as IT guru; return to rank and file faculty member; join another medical school (but in what position?); or leave academics and take my time figuring out the rest of my life.  So I jumped out of the plane without a plan. The good news for my landing is that a career in academics gives you parachute in a way that community practice does often not. You have options.

When I left academics, I wanted a break to recharge and reinvent myself. I worked in a number of different EDs as I sorted through what would really ignite my passion again for my work.  As hard as I tried, I just could not find an ED practice that fit like a glove (and I tried quite a few in those first 18 months out of academics).  It wasn’t so much the schedule that made the transition rough, although, at one point in my adventure at age 54, 75% of the hours I worked were after midnight. Nor was it that you are “it” in many rural ED’s- no specialty presence, no residents of course, no lifeline, little of the support that we have in most of our academic practices. The hard part was this: Having been a decision maker it is tough to assume the role of non-decision maker, not to be the one charged to fix it or to make it happen!  But what I most missed were the mentorship and coaching elements of academics- helping others blossom into their most successful selves as clinicians, teachers, researchers and leaders.  I learned this about myself:  I truly get out of bed every morning to help others grow and enjoy being a part of their journeys. I had an idea that coaching might allow me to do that and I decided to become certified as an executive coach by enrolling in the UGA/Sherpa Executive Coaching program.

I found the work immensely rewarding and my first several practicum clients found the experience extremely valuable. Heartened by this, I opened a coaching firm- Matrix Executive Coaching (matrixexecutivecoaching.com) several years ago.  Matrix focuses on the development needs of healthcare leaders and academicians.  I have expanded my offerings beyond one on one executive coaching and now offer multiple options for an organization to create a coaching culture with team coaching, team communication and effectiveness retreats, coaching skills classes, and coaching 360’s – a soup to nuts approach to growing effective leaders.

What advice do you have for women in academics who may want to leave?

  1. It may take longer than you think to make the transition and to find a fit. Don’t be discouraged by what you think are “false starts”.  Any experience you have will equip you to better make a decision.
  2. Trust your gut. You will know what is right and when it is right. Don’t commit prematurely because the uncertainty is unbearable. Ask yourself every day, “What would be an extraordinary outcome for my transition?”  Every day ask, “What is the next step?” “What do I need to do today to make this happen?”
  3. Have a sound financial plan and enough of a war chest to allow you options. Consult a financial advisor and make sure you understand the ins and outs of buying products that came with your academic job- like health, life, long- and short-term disability, and long-term care insurance.
  4. Rely on your network for support, advice and introductions. Academic physicians are blessed with a richness of connection in their departments, institutions and specialties.  Connect!

Any words of wisdom for women who remain in academia?

  1. Leverage the many tremendous opportunities that feel like mere busy-work to build a portfolio of marketable skills.
  2. Don’t fall prey to inertia or become a victim of your own successes by ending up in a role that doesn’t kindle your enthusiasm. Opportunities are plentiful; passion is scarcer!

 

Persistence Pays Off

Woo Hoo!

After several attempted work-arounds, I have finally figured out a way to make the Gradecard book available for you to download without having to email everyone separately.

You may click this link to access the PDF in Google Docs. You can then download it from the File menu. The entire document follows, but reading 161 pages on the computer can be tedious.

Do You Know Where You Stand?

Today represents the day when women earn what men did in 2011. Yes, on average, it takes close to 16 months for women to receive what men do in 12 months.

As noted in an earlier post, we in academics also suffer this gap. The women in the Colorado study were lucky; they could close their salary gap in only 2 months, and their department did a study. Once blatant inequality became apparent, their administration fixed the gap!

Do you have any idea where your department or university stands? Or where you stand within your academic unit?

Equal pay for equal work is only fair at any level. We all must do what we can to end the wage gap, whether we make minimum wage or 6-figures.

The Importance of the Yardstick

This week, like many in academic medicine, I caught some thought-provoking TEDMED talks. Many faculty did not attend, being unfamiliar with the platform. TED talks started from a 1984 conference to bring together thought leaders from technology, entertainment, and design (TED) and has evolved into a nonprofit group “devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.TEDMED focuses on health and medicine. Right now, 1200+ delegates crowd the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, thinking way outside the box about human biology, health , and healthcare. Talks are brief with minimal audiovisual aids; the focus is the idea.

Thomas Frieden

Yesterday, Thomas Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asked “What do you do when your best shot falls short?”  One theme that recurred throughout his career in public health is the need for measurement. If you do not track and measure something over time, you will never know if you succeed, no matter how hard you work.

This is exactly why AWEnow began. We know women have made great strides over 30 years in obtaining MD degrees. We know that there are more female faculty members since 1995. We have not been tracking how each College of Medicine does in recruiting and retaining women, and we have not been able to compare one COM to another.

Many deans seem satisfied with knowing that they have women faculty, many of whom are succeeding. They may not realize that some do not succeed…that some leave out of frustration with a biased system…and that their COM is not achieving the same level of female success as other institutions.

I admit that making these measurements from the AAMC database and publicizing them is insufficient to change academic medicine. But until we have these measurements, we will still hear leaders saying that their COM has no problem based on their own subjective opinion. After all, there are people working hard to eliminate bias based on gender and other factors!

If you do not track and measure something over time, you will never know if you succeed…no matter how hard you work…in any field.

Matthew & Matilda

 

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.—Matthew 25:29King James Version.

These lines from the bible can be summed up as the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. In the sociology of science, the Matthew Effect refers to greater weight being given to the work of senior scientists, even though less accomplished individuals may have published similar findings. Gender also influences the recognition of scientific accomplishment with the work of women regarded less favorably (AKA the Matilda Effect). When the journal Behavioral Ecology moved to a double-blind manuscript review process in 2001 (reviewers no longer knew the authors’ names), acceptance of articles first-authored by women increased 7.9 percent. In a 2006 commentary in Nature, Ben Barres provides anecdotes from his life as a young woman, now a man:

As an undergrad at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I was the only person in a large class of nearly all men to solve a hard maths problem, only to be told by the professor that my boyfriend must have solved it for me. I was not given any credit. I am still disappointed about the prestigious fellowship competition I later lost to a male contemporary when I was a PhD student, even though the Harvard dean who had read both applications assured me that my application was much stronger (I had published six high-impact papers whereas my male competitor had published only one). Shortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”

Despite the evidence that gender bias exists in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematical fields (STEM), many people still feel that the lack of women in the pipeline explains many disparities, especially the under-representation of women as recipients of prizes for scholarship. While the number of women receiving advanced degrees has increased dramatically since the 1970′s, this hypothesis claims that too few have reached the upper echelons of achievement recognized by such awards. With time, the numbers of eligible men and women will equalize and awards will even out. A recent study examines this ‘Pipeline Hypothesis” as well as the way selection of society award recipients occurs.
The authors collected publicly available data on awards from 13 societies in physical sciences, biomedical sciences, and mathematics between 1991 and 2010, excluding prizes restricted to female recipients, travel awards, student awards, and awards that were unclassifiable. Prizes comprised 3 categories: service to the discipline or society; teaching, education, or mentoring; and scholarship, discovery, or research. The latter category was split into junior investigator awards and prizes with no age or time restriction. Awards for scholarly work clearly confer more prestige and career advantage than the other categories.
In the first decade of study, 13 societies gave 206 prizes to 1,924 recipients. In the second decade the number of awards and recipients grew to 296 and 2,865, respectively. The percentage of female winners for both decades is shown in the figure:

For what do we reward women? Nurturing behavior...

Women clearly receive more recognition for service and teaching than for scholarship. The group did multivariate regression analysis of their data, standardizing each award type to the rate for teaching awards. Teaching awards were used for comparison because they presumably reflect the increase in female faculty in the workforce for each discipline. Women were much less likely to receive a prestigious unrestricted award for scholarship compared to teaching in both time periods; contrary to the pipeline hypothesis, the disparity between these awards actually increased from the first to the second decade!
Four societies agreed to participate in an analysis of the selection process, involving 518 award recipients in the second decade of the study. The average prize committee has 5.9 members with 1.4 women. Men chaired 94 percent of the committees, and 42 percent of these groups had no women members. Previous studies have shown that committee composition influences awards, with each woman on a committee doubling the chances of a woman winning an award. Selection groups chaired by women are 3 times more likely to name a female winner. In the present data set, 17.1 percent of nominees were women, and women won 17.1 percent of awards, although not equally distributed across the categories as detailed above.
Logistic regression of this data set, using combined service and teaching awards as the reference category, showed that men were more than 8 times more likly than women to win an unrestricted scholarly award and almost 3 times more likely to get a young investigator award. Even when corrected for the gender composition of the nomination pool, men remain more than twice as likely to win a research award. Part of this finding may be due to committee composition. They found that having a woman on a committee did increase the chances of a woman winning, although this effect was obliterated by a male committee chair. For example, selection groups chaired by men awarded prizes to men 95.1 percent of the time, even though women comprised 21 percent of the applicant pool (p=0.008).
The authors ultimately reject the “Pipeline Hypothesis” based on their analysis showing that the discrepancy between scholarly and teaching/service awards for women in STEM has increased rather than decreased over time. They identify a number of factors that may contribute including lack of women in the nomination pool (perhaps reflecting less self-nomination), gender composition of committees, and gender bias. They also address the growth in awards limited to women:
Yet women-only awards can camouflage women’s under-representation by inflating the number of female award recipients, leading to the impression that no disparities exist.
Not only does this lead to a false impression, it may also reinforce the marginalization of women’s research:
Recall that research suggests that women and men both assign lower value to work done by women. Awards to women only, then, may implicitly support the cultural belief that women’s scientific efforts are not as important as those of men, thus contributing to the ‘ghettoization’ of women’s scientific achievements, perhaps even leading to the oversight of women as candidates for unrestricted awards.
The authors suggest a number of considerations that could help remedy these discrepancies:
  • Increasing the number of women in the nomination pool
  • Increasing women on prize committees, particularly as chair
  • Review award criteria for biased language
  • Change open-ended letters of support (which often contain gender-biased language) to structured questions about candidates
  • Committees should consider the possibility of implicit bias during their deliberations

Academic Women of Note: Ann Daly

This post continues our series of interviews with women who have made their mark in academia or have interesting thoughts for those of us in the Ivory Tower. Ann Daly, PhD, fled the university to become an executive coach and founder of WomenAdvance.com, the online career accelerator for women.

Question: What is your educational background?

My BA is in journalism with an art history minor. I earned my MA and PhD degrees at New York University in Performance Studies—a form of cultural studies. I focused on feminist theory, nonverbal communication, and women in modern dance.

Ann Daly

What has been your career path?

It’s been a long and winding road! I started out as a feature writer at a daily newspaper when I graduated from college. After a few years, I enrolled in grad school at New York University and then landed a tenure-track position at The University of Texas at Austin. I spent 17 years on faculty at UT, then quit to open my practice as a coach specializing in personal growth and professional development for women. I brought with me my favorite things about teaching—the intense, focused work with individual students, and the classroom teaching. Happily, I left behind the grading and committee work.

Why did you leave academia?

I yearned for something bigger. I wanted to learn more about myself, to see what more I was capable of. I wanted fresh challenges.  I wanted to use my analytical acumen to build lives rather than rip apart arguments.

What do you believe is more difficult for women—academia or business?

Both domains are challenging for women. They’re both embedded in the same overarching patriarchal culture. Power defaults to the men in the room.

Why did you become a coach?

Because I love focusing one-on-one. I love the intensity of deep dialogue, and I love being able to see real-life results. It’s a tangible way that I can change the world, by helping women claim and use their power, one woman at a time. Plus, I really love my clients! That said, I’ve just launched an online career education center for women called WomenAdvance.com. I decided last year that the web is a great way to reach women earlier in their careers, and to offer them guidance on a more convenient, affordable platform. After a lifetime committed to the success and advancement of women, I’m really excited to be expanding my mission into the online world.

What advice do you have for women working in academia?

Never forget why you entered academia, and never stop learning and growing

 

Do you know a Woman of Note? Email your suggestion to mail (at) awenow.org

All Together Now: Female Faculty Grade Cards

Over the first 6 months of Academic Women for Equality Now, scores of Female Faculty Friendliness were posted for every College of Medicine in the US and Puerto Rico. Now, in honor of Women’s History Month, all of the grade cards and accompanying analyses are available in a single PDF.

I want everyone to know where women stand in US Medical Schools. I especially want every dean to know where their school stands. This publication is covered by a Creative Commons License (as is everything on this website – see the bottom of the right column under Legal Stuff). Feel free to share this information anywhere, with proper attribution.

The data compiled in this report all came to me for free. I compiled it, analyzed it, and gave it a graphic format. I am giving this document away for free. Unfortunately, its size (10.2 MB) prevents me from posting it for download at this site (yet; I am still working on changing the system – that seems to be a constant in all aspects of my life).  In the meantime, I will send you the PDF or a link to it via email when you sign up for the AWEnow newsletter (top of the right column).

I swear you will not be spammed by giving me your email address. You will receive the 161-page PDF comparing all US Medical Schools for women in senior and leadership positions and the monthly update from AWEnow.

Help me spread the word.

And if you know how to get similar data for other academic disciplines, I am looking for collaborators! What other parts of academia under-represent women? If we do not look, no one will.

 

The Power of Networking Networks: LinkedIn

We have all heard about the power of social media. The urge to share on the internet can be a powerful force, allowing your (future) employer to see “Girls Gone Wild” vacation photos or to learn that your favorite YouTube video involves a chimp peeing in its own mouth. Neither will help you get or keep a career.

The connections fostered by internet 2.0 can be a force for good as well. LinkedIn, described as “Facebook for professionals,” provides a great environment to connect and reconnect. A basic account costs nothing; paid accounts appeal mostly to businesses, Human Resource professionals, and others trying to fill positions. After signing up, you fill in your resume. Be complete; the site will use previous places of employment and education to help you find colleagues and other connections. You can then send invitations to connect to these people. In general, ask to connect with people you have met. If too many people turn you down and say they do not know you, the site will make you supply their email to send the invitation! On the other hand, the point of LinkedIn is to weave a wide web of connections. If I get an invitation from someone I really do not remember, I usually accept it. In my experience, LinkedIn spam has not (yet) been a huge issue.

Click to enlarge

After you have made some connections, your page will look like the figure to the right after signing into the service. Your photo and a place to post a tweet-like message appears at the top (software solutions will allow all of your tweets to go to LinkedIn; if the “bird” box is checked, your LinkedIn update will go to your twitter account as well. Don’t worry – you do not have to tweet to use LinkedIn). Below that area are three internet stories based on preferences in your profile. Below that is a stream of updates from the people to whom you are connected. It includes what they share plus any new connections they have made or groups they have joined.

What is a group? Exactly what it sounds like. Anyone can start a group for discussion on LinkedIn. There is a directory of established groups available via the “Groups” menu at the top. Anyone can join an open group. Closed groups require vetting by the group’s founder or administrator first. Closed groups thus provide safe places to discuss topics with some degree of privacy. You are still on the internet (a public place), so some degree of decorum is in order, but overall the security structure seems decent.

Click to Enlarge

Another Facebook-like feature is LinkedIn Events. Once again, anyone can create an event. It then appears in the site’s calendar of events. When you first choose “Events” from the “More” menu, LinkedIn will show you possible events based on your preferences. After you sign up for an event, you get a page (see lower figure) that lists other LinkedIn members (aka future connections) who are going to the same event.

LinkedIn has all sorts of add-ins. An Amazon applet lets you share your reading list. Using TripIt? You can post your travel information on your site. Other apps let you share presentations, giving an extra dimension to your resume.

Want to learn more about LinkedIn? I have a great guide for beginners that I can share, although I am not allowed to post it for download here. Sign up for the AWEnow newsletter (top of right column) and I will email it to you.

Academic Women of Note: Janet Bickel

This post continues our series of interviews with women who have made their mark in academia or have interesting thoughts for those of us in the Ivory Tower.

Janet Bickel

Janet Bickel’s work with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) led to the current Group on Women in Medicine and Science. She currently provides a variety of coaching and leadership development services  (www.janetbickel.com).

Question: What educational background and experiences shaped your career?

My background is kind of unusual. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri in 1971, fired up to teach high school English, I applied to every school district in Rhode Island to no avail (my husband and I had moved there so he could go to RISD).  The only job I could find was as a secretary in the office of the President at Brown University. I was about to die of boredom when Brown’s Program in Medical Sciences hired me as Student Affairs Assistant.  The program was in the process of becoming a full-fledged medical school, and there were no other staff besides the business and development officers. I became the   founding admissions, financial aid and student affairs officer, obtaining my “medical education” from the students. This rich grassroots experience turned out to be perfect preparation for staffing AAMC’s Organization of Student Representatives and  the medical school admissions, financial aid and student affairs deans  and for building bridges from  the students to the leaders of AAMC’s Councils of Deans, Teaching Hospitals, and Academic Societies. During this interval of 1977-87, I also led the first national studies of human values teaching programs in clinical education, medical students’ ethical dilemmas, and  HIV/AIDS Education.

Then in 1987, the new AAMC president Robert Petersdorf made funding available to create an Office of Women in Medicine (WIM) [more below]. During the next 13 years, I also spearheaded the first AAMC foci on faculty affairs and development and  published the first national studies of maternity leave policies for residents, parental leave policies for faculty, and promotion and personnel policies for part-time faculty.

What’s most significant about my story is the match-up between my strengths and the opportunities at Brown and at AAMC:  eagerness to learn from those I am serving; appetite for grappling with  the complexities of human development in academic medicine; desire to connect people across  functions and hierarchies;  risk-taker and self-starter able to work with little support. When your strengths align well with the opportunities and demands of your work, the sky’s the limit. I was truly fortunate to have intersected both Brown’s emerging medical school and the AAMC when I did!

Please describe your work at AAMC related to Women in Medicine and Science.

I initiated several activities: 1) Assembled a strong advisory committee; 2) Expanded the categories, publication and distribution of WIM statistics (we didn’t call it   “female faculty friendliness report cards”, but we got  medical school deans’ attention by making public  each school’s rankings, eg on their number of women department chairs) (also in 1989 my article  in The New England Journal of Medicine helped put the Office on the map); 3) produced a quarterly newsletter plus compendiums of examples of WIM programs; 4) searched out and connected with the WIM organizations of over 25 specialty societies and with staff at AMA, NSF, etc. and as they evolved, promoted and served as invited ELAM and NIH’s new Office of Research on Women’s Health; 5) first authored “Increasing Women’s Leadership in Academic Medicine” [Acad Med, 2002; 77:1043-61], the first report to articulate a  systems view of this challenge; and 6) and perhaps most influentially, organized annual junior (now called “early-career”) and senior (now called “mid-career”) WIM leadership development programs that have served as a model for many  specialty societies and medical schools (and were the first AAMC programs designed for medical school faculty).

What is your view of the work that remains for women in academic medicine?

Despite increasing numbers of women in all fields of science and medicine, we live in a half-changed world where women have equal access to education but, for instance, the 17 individuals honored this year by the National Academy of Sciences are all men.

While the challenges of combining career and family responsibilities remain more acute for women than men, perhaps even more significant is that gender remains a powerful social category although its effects are usually subliminal. For instance, the conjunction of “white men” and “power” seems natural–but to many the conjunction of “women” and “power” sounds unnatural. Women are required to make many more gender-related adaptations than men in order to succeed– for instance, if a woman physician speaks too firmly to a nurse, she risks being labeled “too big for her britches.”  Women, especially in health care, are expected to be nurturing and collaborative in ways that men are not. These double standards show little sign of diminution. During clinical clerkships many female students still default to stereotypically feminine behaviors (eg apologizing, doing the work of support staff).  Many form a “personal glass ceiling”—that is, internalizing as personal the cultural difficulties they face, hence underestimating their own abilities and limiting their goals.

Because women who downsize themselves tend to quietly disappear, even though this waste is not a “women’s issue,” the costs associated with women’s wasted potentials remain invisible. Who is addressing this loss?  Men feel like they don’t have it so great these days either, and many are concluding that women who don’t climb the ranks simply prefer to devote more of themselves to their families or lack the necessary appetite for competition. With women outnumbering men in universities, most young women expect equity as a right and are unprepared for the work that remains. And pointing with pride at all these bright young women, most leaders are acting as if the “WIM problem” is solved. More than one has told me “I’m surrounded by women” –without noticing that these women do not feel empowered enough to ever disagree with him! Leaders unwilling to look at how the culture facilitates the participation and growth of some more than others perpetuate the patterns.

The resulting organizational silence means that key questions remain unaddressed. For example:

  • How can we counter the tendency of many men to categorize any issue related to gender as a “women’s issue” and therefore of low concern? (or to give it lip service, which may be worse since hypocrisy begets cynicism, perhaps the deadliest of  organizational outcomes).
  • While women’s interactions with each other are largely positive, at some time in their careers a large percentage of women feel undermined or cut by a trusted woman in a way that plunges them into turmoil, exacting a toll on their careers and spirits and on the relational environment.
  • Since a central tenet of inclusion is the immense diversity of humans and since men and women are more alike than different, what unintended message does “counting” women chairs and deans convey?
  • In a capitalistic society and hierarchical culture, what does “equity” mean? Have any of us ever experienced it? If not, is it a useful concept?

How can we address these challenges? What do we need to get better at?

I’ll begin with an inflammatory observation of what we DON”T need: more studies. I believe that analysis has become a substitute for action. We have decades’ worth of studies that are neither producing important new findings nor contributing to culture change.

So how can we address these challenges?

  • Clearly there’s a continuing need for ELAM, which has been tremendously influential in so many ways, and for AAMC’s GWIMS programs, and for resources and stimuli such as Academic Women for Equality Now.
  • Institutional WIM advocates should keep working with other leaders to create forum (such as Grand Rounds and faculty retreats) devoted to learning to detect perceptual filters and to communicate relationally across differences.
  • Established men and women professionals can improve their organizations and extend their own legacies by coaching young women who are entering competitive cultures unprepared to handle many of the tasks (eg negotiation) or to make sense of all the constraints and opportunities.
  • Individuals who notice gendered assumptions interfering with a process can skillfully draw attention to this. For example asking, “Are we holding women to a higher standard than men on this behavior?“ and “When writing letters for trainees, do you experience a tendency to focus more on the skills of the men and on the personalities of the women?” By respectfully drawing attention to the advantages of assuring fair processes, such conversations shift the culture in ways that benefit everyone.
  • Like Page Morahan, I take every opportunity to remind women to support each other (when a woman puts down another woman, she does many forms of damage) and to build a community of colleagues who give each other useful feedback and affirm each other’s strengths.

What are you doing now, and what are your plans?

In 2003 after 25 years, I left AAMC because I couldn’t see the next way to make a big difference and sensed it was a bigger risk to stay and not grow than to start my own business. So I traded that wonderful security and status for autonomy and leapt into the emerging field of coaching –a resource that most academics still regard with skepticism. I partner primarily with academic physicians and scientists to further their development in the ways most important to them. This work is an enormous privilege and I find as much meaning in it as I did in leading programs at the national level. I intend to keep coaching until I’m decrepit!

I also continue to design career and leadership development programs for institutions and professional societies and to write about tough issues  (eg  “Difficult issues in mentoring: Recommendations on making the “undiscussable” discussable” with Susan L.Rosenthal; Acad Med. 2011; 86:1229-34).

In recent years I have benefited more than I can express from participating in the Courage to Lead and Leading Organizations to Health programs offered by Relationship Centered Health Care (http://www.rchcweb.com/).  Almost every day I bike or walk and am finally taking a yoga class and am reading more Buddhist authors. From these synergistic activities and from my family and friends,  I gain inspiration and support for my continuing exploration of  human beings’ profound potentials and connectedness and of how we can keep opening and deepening our hearts in the face of so many opposing forces. I believe with the great teacher Parker J Palmer that:  “The heart is where we integrate the intellect with the rest of our faculties such as intuition and emotion. It is where we learn how to think the world together and find the courage to act on what we know.”

 

Do you know a Woman of Note? Email your suggestion to mail (at) awenow.org

Rocky Mountain High? Not for Women Faculty…Yet

Click for Source

A recent paper on gender equity caught my eye:

Assessing Gender Equity in a Large Academic Department of Pediatrics. Rotbart et al, Academic Medicine 87:98-104, 2012

As a pediatric sub-specialist this study had personal interest. It also fed my interest in women’s leadership in academia, particularly academic medicine.

Pediatrics has long attracted a large number of women physicians, although the number of women faculty during my training in the 1980′s still seemed low. The pediatrics department in question, at University of Colorado, had achieved nearly 50% female faculty in the decade prior to their study. However, disparities in senior-level faculty and leadership positions persisted. They audited a number of records to test two potential, non-exclusive hypotheses:

  1. The department has treated women and men unequally and has failed to adequately advance the careers of female faculty
  2. Female faculty entered academic medicine more recently than male faculty and have just begun to catch up in seniority, tenure and leadership roles.

Five factors that affect faculty equity were examined after data collection and de-identification. These included promotion, tenure, leadership roles, retention, and salary.Only faculty on a promotion tract (assistant professor or higher rank) were included. Part-time work was “corrected” to the full-time equivilant (FTE), so someone who was full-time for 3 years and 0.6 FTE for 3 years had a duration at rank of 4.8 years. Similar calculations were used to compare salaries to available standards. Salary was examined as a categorical variable based on national standards and as a continuous variable.

Of 543 faculty in 2009, 263 met the inclusion criteria. Of these faculty, 118 (45%) were women. 60 women (54%) were assistant professors, 39 (56%) were associate professors, and 19 (23%) were full professors. No significant difference in time to promotion was noted in the study. Of the full professors who had also been promoted to associate professor at Colorado, the average time for the first promotion was 1 year longer for women than for men. Male full professors had been in rank nearly twice as long as women. Only 18% of tenured facutly were women. Changes in the tenure process 2 years before this study resulted in tenure not being awarded until promotion to full professor in most cases. Tenure awards were still predominantly to men, but the gender disparity was less pronounced after the change.

Women held 62% of medical directorships but men composed 75% of section/division chief  and 86% of sub-chair positions. Medical directorships are clinical positions, while chiefs and sub-chairs are academic leaders. The chiefs and sub-chairs had held their positions, for the most part, for 10 years or more. Most had been appointed in an era when fewer women met leadership criteria.

Similar numbers of men and women left the department over the decade studied, and the numbers did not differ from nationally reported data. No systematic exit interviews or surveys were available.

Click to enlarge. Data from Acad Med 87:98, 2012.

Now for the fun part: salary. At all faculty ranks more women than men received pay below the median matched for rank, years at rank, and subspecialty, as shown in the graph. The heavy horizontal line shows the percentage of faculty by gender paid above and below the national median. For men, this hits at 51%, about what you would expect. For women, 72% received salaries below the median. Remember, these salaries had been corrected to 1.0 FTE levels for the analysis; these findings are not directly the result of women with part-time employment!

When considering pay as a continuous variable for multivariate analysis, the average woman faculty member received 98% of the median, while men averaged 105%. When faculty with leadership roles were examined, female leaders received an average of 93% of median pay and male leaders averaged 112%. (No national standards have been gathered for salaries with leadership positions of clinical and academic types.)

What does this mean in actual dollars? Depending on specialty and rank, the difference in annual compensation would be $8,000 to $16,500 less for women than men. Since benefits, like retirement plan contributions, are usually calculated as a percentage of salary, these women will suffer from this salary lag for the rest of their lives.

The authors conslude that both of their hypotheses are correct. Women are just beginning to catch up to men in seniority and tenure; however, gender disparities exist, possibly hindering the advancement of the careers of women faculty. They note that one important limitations of their study is lack of root cause analysis; how do disparities in tenure, leadership positions, and salary occur? Could it be bias or sexism, both in and out of academic medicine?

The authors do let us in on the changes the department made as a result of their endeavor. To address the tenure gap, they implemented mandatory referral of all candidates for promotion to professor to the departmental committee for simultaneous tenure consideration. The department began reviewing their leadership roles, in hopes of understanding the disparities identified and, perhaps, restructuring the department in the future. They have also implemented exit interviews and a comprehensive annual review process to understand why faculty leave or become dissatisfied. Finally, they implemented immediate salary corrections and ongoing monitoring of compensation in relation to national data.

Every department in academia should do this sort of analysis in my opinion, especially the salary assessment. As women make up half of all graduating physicians, they should become half of our medical faculty and, eventually, half of our academic leadership. That will not happen if women remain systematically devalued in the Ivory Tower.

 

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