Medical School Faculty: No Parity for Women
Looking at faculty, one finds that in 1990 only 20.7% of all medical
school professors were women. This represents only a 7% increase from
1967. At this rate, women will not reach parity on medical school
faculties until the year 2077. What's more, this 20.7% is predominantly
white women, as only 4.7% of all medical school faculty members are
women of color.
When looking at rank, one finds that women are clustered primarily
in the lower faculty ranks. Eighty-nine percent of all white women and
93.5% of all women of color faculty are below the rank of professor,
compared to only 69% of white men and 78.3% of men of color.
When women enter the field of medicine to teach, they are promoted
much more slowly than their male colleagues. On average, men are promoted
twice as fast as women to the rank of assistant or associate professor.
Thus, even though women are entering the academic pipeline, they are
being blocked from moving up the ranks.
At the highest levels of medical academia, women are even more rare.
Only 2% of all department chairs are women. In 1990 only 2 of the 127
medical schools in the United States were headed by women deans. Today,
one year later, not a single medical school in the country is headed
by a woman dean.
Sex Segregation: The Rule in Health Care
The health care profession, to this date, is essentially sex-segregated,
as 84% of physicians are male and 97% of nurses are female.
Among practicing physicians, women are clustered in the four lowest-paid
specialties: general family practice, pediatrics, psychiatry, and internal
medicine. Together, these specialties account for 70% of all women physicians.
In addition, a 1986 study showed that while women are more likely to
go into these specialties, women of color are even more so. Surgery
and its various specialties, which not only command the highest incomes
but also the highest public confidence, are comprised of only 8% women.
The nursing profession, still essentially a female domain, has historically
been undervalued, underpaid, and denied power within the medical hierarchy.
This is despite the fact that nurses represent the largest group of
health care professionals. While this report focuses on women physicians,
we recognize that the problems of sex segregation, wage discrimination,
and male domination of the health care industry also adversely affect
women in the field of nursing.
Medical Women Face Wage Gap
Even within medical specialties, women physicians are not treated
equally. A huge income gap between men and women exists. In 1985, the
median income of women surgeons was 61% of male surgeons. By 1988,
female doctors earned 62.8 cents for every dollar their male counterparts
earned. What's worse, this figure is down from the 1982 figure of
63.2 cents for every dollar.
Medical Organizations Are Imbalanced
Women in national organizations fare no better. The American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), whose sole mission is to
provide health care to women, has never had more than two women
in its top 17 offices at any one time in its 41-year history
And the biggest medical bastion of them all, the American Medical
Association (AMA), which claims to speak for all doctors, has never
had a woman executive officer in its 144-year history. In fact, the
AMA never even had a woman on its board until 1989.
When women's lives hang in the very balance, we can't stand by and
wait as women are relegated to the bottom ranks of medicine. Time alone
does not achieve equality. Women, especially women in medicine, must
act now if we are to safeguard the health of generations to come.
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