Our sheMD Editors-in-Chief not only run sheMD (and work as Emergency Medicine Physicians), but they also do gender-based research!

 

Many specialties have been shown to have gender bias affecting medical society awards, including dermatology, neurology, orthapedics, otolaryngoloty, PM&R, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, physiatry and anesthesiology.  See our journal club.

 

In our study, titled  "What Emergency Medicine Rewards: Is There Implicit Gender Bias in National Awards?" we looked at the gender distribution of Emergency Medicine awards specifically.

 

WHAT DID WE FIND?

Females received 28% of awards in Emergency Medicine from 2014 to 2018. This was proportional to the 27% of women in Emergency Medicine.  YAY! 
 

However we still found some gendered differences:

Only 16% of all named awards were named after women.

Female awardees were more likely to be recognized early in their career for advocacy and work pertaining to the advancement of women, whereas men were favored for awards recognizing mentorship and organizational contributions. 

The lack of late career awards may contribute to the leadership gap and the leaky pipeline of women progressing from assistant professor to associate professor and full professor.

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In Emergency Medicine fewer women hold a chair, chief, or vice-chair position. Given the importance of awards in academic promotion, the lack of female presence in leadership roles may reflect a lag time between receiving national awards and earning academic promotion. 

 

What can we do about this?

Nominate each other for awards!

Ask others to nominate you!

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