Gender Disparity in Academic Neurosurgery.

Tiffany Odell,Bailey Zampella,Harjyot Toor,Faisal Khosa,Sadia Qamar,Javed Siddiqi,Ariel Takayanagi,Khashayar Golbaz,Sabeena Jalal

doi:10.7759/cureus.4628

Abstract

BackgroundIn the 1960s, less than 10% of medical school graduates were women. Today, almost half of all medical school graduates are women. Despite the significant rise in female medical school graduates, there continues to be a large gender gap in most subspecialties, particularly surgical subspecialties such as neurosurgery.ObjectiveThe purpose of our study was to assess the factors contributing to differences in the academic ranks of male and female staff in academic neurosurgery programs in Canada and the United States (US).MethodsData about women in academic neurosurgery was collected from a number of sources, including Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database (FREIDA), Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) FRIEDA, ACGME, CaRMS, Pubmed, and Scopus, to create a database of all neurosurgeons in the US and Canada. The analysis included neurosurgeons in academic and leadership ranks and also the H index, citations, publications, citations per year, and publications per year.ResultsWomen represent only 12% of neurosurgeons in the US and Canada. When gender is further analyzed by academic appointment, women represent just over 12% of neurosurgeons at the assistant and associate professor levels (15.44% and 13.27%, respectively) but significantly less at the full professor level (5.84%). Likewise, only 7.45% of women hold first-in command leadership positions while 4.69% hold second-in-command positions within their institutions.ConclusionsThe existing data shows that women are significantly under-represented in academic neurosurgery. Lack of role models, experience, limited scientific output, and aspirations of a controlled lifestyle could be the potential contributing factors.

Highlights

In recent years, women have surpassed their male counterparts on the education forefront, earning more undergraduate degrees than men
Data about women in academic neurosurgery was collected from a number of sources, including Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database (FREIDA), Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) FRIEDA, ACGME, CaRMS, Pubmed, and Scopus, to create a database of all neurosurgeons in the United States (US) and Canada
When gender is further analyzed by academic appointment, women represent just over 12% of neurosurgeons at the assistant and associate professor levels (15.44% and 13.27%, respectively) but significantly less at the full professor level (5.84%)

Summary

Introduction

Women have surpassed their male counterparts on the education forefront, earning more undergraduate degrees than men. Women pursue graduate-level education in all fields and, reflectively, medical school enrollment has experienced an increasing number of female applicants. In the 2015-2016 academic year, 46.4% of medical school graduates were women [1]. Women are found to be less productive than male dermatologists in research in terms of years spent in research, the number of publications, and citations [7]. We examine female neurosurgeons in the United States and Canada according to their academic title, participation in leadership, and research productivity. Almost half of all medical school graduates are women. Despite the significant rise in female medical school graduates, there continues to be a large gender gap in most subspecialties, surgical subspecialties such as neurosurgery

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Discussion

Conclusion