Acad Med. 2024 Jan 1;99(1):63-69. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000005315. Epub 2023 Jul 6.
Gender disparities among the senior echelons of academic medicine are striking and persistent. The role of medical school dean has been particularly immune to gender diversity, and limited prior research identified women's shorter decanal tenures as a potential driver. The authors assessed gender differences in tenure length of deanships in the current era to elucidate this finding.
From October 2020 to June 2021, the authors collected information about medical school deanships that were held from January 1, 2006, to June 30, 2020. All schools were members of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The authors collected data from online public records and augmented their findings via direct outreach to medical schools. They used time-to-event analyses before and after adjustment for interim vs permanent status of the initial appointment, school ownership (public/private), and school size to assess for gender differences in length of deanship tenure during the study period. The unit of analysis was deanships, and the primary outcome was length of deanships measured in years.
Authors included data on 528 deanships. Women held 91 (17%) of these terms. Men held the majority of permanent deanships (n = 352 [85%]). A greater percentage of the deanships held by women were interim only (n = 27 [30%]) compared with men (n = 85 [20%]). In unadjusted and adjusted analyses, there were no significant gender differences in length of deanship tenures.
Analysis of appointments of AAMC-member medical school deans from 2006 to 2020 revealed that women have remained in their deanships as long as their male counterparts. The myth about women deans' shorter longevity should no longer be promulgated. Academic medicine should consider novel solutions to addressing women's persistent underrepresentation in the dean role, including employing the gender proportionality principle used in the business and legal communities.
学术医学高层中的性别差距引人注目且持续存在。医学院院长一职尤其难以实现性别多样性，有限的先前研究表明，女性担任院长的任期较短可能是一个潜在的驱动因素。作者评估了当前时代院长任期长度的性别差异，以阐明这一发现。
从 2020 年 10 月至 2021 年 6 月，作者收集了自 2006 年 1 月 1 日至 2020 年 6 月 30 日期间担任医学院院长的信息。所有学校均为美国医学协会（AAMC）的成员。作者从在线公共记录中收集数据，并通过直接联系医学院来扩充他们的发现。他们使用事件时间分析，在调整初始任命的临时与永久状态、学校所有权（公立/私立）和学校规模之前和之后，评估研究期间院长任期长度的性别差异。分析单位为院长职位，主要结局是院长任期的长度，以年为单位。
作者纳入了 528 个院长职位的数据。其中，女性担任了 91 个（17%）。男性担任了大多数永久院长职位（n=352[85%]）。与男性相比（n=85[20%]），女性担任的院长职位中，临时职位的比例更高（n=27[30%]）。在未经调整和调整后的分析中，院长任期长度的性别差异没有统计学意义。
对 2006 年至 2020 年 AAMC 成员医学院院长任命的分析表明，女性的任期与男性一样长。关于女性院长任期较短的神话不应再被传播。学术医学应该考虑采用商业和法律界使用的性别比例原则等新方法来解决女性在院长角色中持续代表性不足的问题。
