Female medical leadership: cross sectional study.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the relation between male and female medical leadership.

DESIGN

Cross sectional study on predictive factors for female medical leadership with data on sex, age, specialty, and occupational status of Norwegian physicians.

SETTING

Oslo, Norway.

SUBJECTS

13 844 non-retired Norwegian physicians.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Medical leaders, defined as physicians holding a leading position in hospital medicine, public health, academic medicine, or private health care.

RESULTS

14.6% (95% confidence interval 14.0% to 15.4%) of the men were leaders compared with 5.1% (4.4% to 5.9%) of the women. Adjusted for age men had a higher estimated probability of leadership in all categories of age and job, the highest being in academic medicine with 0.57 (0.42 to 0.72) for men aged over 54 years compared with 0.39 (0.21 to 0.63) for women in the same category. Among female hospital physicians there was a positive relation between the proportion of women in their specialty and the probability of leadership.

CONCLUSION

Women do not reach senior positions as easily as men. Medical specialties with high proportions of women have more female leaders.