Is Empowerment of Female Radiologists Still Needed? Findings of a Systematic Review.

Isolde Martina Busch,Giulia Fichera,Michela Rimondini,Chiara Giraudo,Raffaella Motta

doi:10.3390/ijerph18041542

Isolde Martina Busch, Giulia Fichera + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041542

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Abstract

Considering that radiology is still a male-dominated specialty in which men make up more than two thirds of the workforce, this systematic review aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the current role of women in radiological imaging, focusing on the main aspects such as career progression, leadership, academic practice, and perceived discrimination. Three electronic databases were searched up to 21 October 2020. To identify additional records, weekly automatic email alerts were set up on PubMed until December 2020 and reference lists of key studies and included papers were screened. Two reviewers independently performed the search, study selection, quality appraisal, data extraction, and formal narrative synthesis. In case of disagreement, a third reviewer was involved. Across the 61 included articles, women worked more often part-time and held fewer positions of power in hospitals, on editorial boards, and at the academic level (associate and full professors). Women were less often in relevant positions in scientific articles, had fewer publications, and had a lower H-index. Discrimination and sexual harassment were experienced by up to 40% and 47% of female radiologists, respectively. Our study highlights that women in radiology are still underrepresented and play a marginal role in the field, struggling to reach top and leading positions.

Highlights

As stated by Paik in the Journal of the American Medical Association [1], “A generation ago a woman’s role in medicine was that of a patient”
The first interesting point emerging from our systematic review is represented by the fact that most of the papers were published in the last five years, suggesting that only recently the radiological community approached this topic
In particular, academic careers, our results show that women still have lower H-indexes and a lower number of publications and are less frequently in relevant positions in papers

Summary

Introduction

As stated by Paik in the Journal of the American Medical Association [1], “A generation ago a woman’s role in medicine was that of a patient”. The number of women pursuing a medical career is constantly increasing [2] because, in the last decades, strong efforts have been made to enhance gender equality in medicine and, overall, in science. “to achieve full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls”, the United. Nations General Assembly declared 11 February as International Day of Women and Girls in Science [3]. Contemporary feminist movements such as the Women’s March as well as foundations such as the Global Fund for Women demonstrate that we are living in a time where women are starting to become empowered [4,5]. Male predominance is still widespread at various levels of medical training [6,7] and women in the academic environment occupying leading positions are underrepresented [6]

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