Gender Disparity in Academic Gastroenterology: The Under-Representation of Women Continues: 2017 Radhika Srinivasan Gender-Based Research Award: 2017 Presidential Poster Award

Abstract

Introduction: While the field of gastroenterology (GI) has made progress in attracting females, women remain underrepresented in academic GI. This study aims to determine the relationship between scholarly productivity, as measured by the h-index, and the academic rank of female gastroenterologists (GEs). Methods: The Fellowship and Residency Interactive Database was queried for GI fellowship programs. The individual websites of the 109 departments were visited to accrue the list of faculty members, their gender, and ranks. Ranks included Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, and Chair. The Scopus database was subsequently used to record each academic physician's h-index. Statistical analyses were conducted with Wilcoxon Rank-Sum and ANOVA tests. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results: Of the 1703 academic GEs, females accounted for 25.5% of the total GEs, 38.4% of Assistant Professors, 22.0% of Associate Professors, 10.9% of Professors, and 6.3% of Chairs (Fig 1). Overall, male GEs had higher h-indices than their female counterparts (18.2 95% CI 17.22-19.18 vs 10.33 95% CI 9.14-11.53, p < 0.0001). When stratifying for academic rank, women had significantly lower h-indices than men in the Assistant Professor (p=0.0012) and Chair (p=0.01) cohorts (Fig 2). There were no statistically significant differences in h-indices when controlling for publication range in years between men and women.Figure: This figure shows the proportion of females and males in each academic rank.Figure: This figure shows the differences between males and females in their h-index, which is indicative of scholarly productivity, for each academic rank.Conclusion: Our findings corroborate past studies and suggest women receive less academic promotion than their male counterparts. Women comprised only 25% of the total population, and significantly lower percentages of each senior academic ranks. When controlling for rank, women had significantly lower h-indices in the Assistant Professor cohort. This could be explained by the limited early-career productivity because of childbearing early in a woman's career. This is further validated by our finding that as women rise in academic rank, their h-indices tend to converge with that of their male peers. Interestingly, this did not hold true for female Chairs, who had statistically lower h-indices than their male counterparts. The significantly lower research productivity of females at this stage could explain why there are such few women in this position. In addition, females tend to engage in more teaching than research, indicating that this aspect of academic mentoring should be taken into account when determining academic promotion.