Capitalizing on women's intellectual capital in the professions.

Abstract

omen and minorities nowmake up almost 80% of thelabor force. Yet women inthe professions, including those in aca-demic medicine, live in a half-changedworld. Women make up more than halfof college students and almost half ofthe students in most professions. Andthere have been large numbers ofwomen in the faculty pipeline in highereducation and academic medicine forover two decades now—plenty of timefor them to emerge from the other endas major players and leaders. But re-search on women’s careers demonstratesthat increasing the number of womenentering the pipeline is not translatinginto substantially increased numbers ofwomen professors. The AmericanCouncil on Education reports that only13% of doctorate-granting institutionsare headed by women, and the Associ-ation of American Medical Colleges re-ports that only 8% of medical schooldepartment chairs are women. Thus,while women have achieved equal ac-cess to higher education and other pro-fessions, we as a society are still wastinga great deal of their potential. How canwe better capitalize on women’s intel-lectual capital?*