Although medical school enrollment currently has gender parity, men still dominate the ranks of senior faculty at medical schools. Many assume the imbalance may be due to female professors’ greater responsibilities at home and a lack of part-time careers in academic medicine.
In The Second Shift in Academic Medicine, Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent study conducted at University of Minnesota Medical School.
A few statistical highlights:
- Full-time female professors reported an average of 31 hours devoted to household duties per week, as opposed to 19 hours for men.
- 19% of women had no spouse or partner, compared to 5% of men.
- 16% of women responded that they had no children, compared to 9% of men.
- While 70% of women said that they had a spouse who was employed fulltime, only 36% of men did.
- 33% of women were interested in starting a part-time tenure track vs. 14% of men.
In addition, women were more likely than men to view certain policies as obstacles to their careers. Such policies included lack of part-time promotion track, meetings after 5pm or on weekends, lack of onsite childcare, lack of emergency childcare, and inadequate parental leave policy.
