Female leaders work to level the playing field in surgery and in medicine
BY NANCY AVERETT
Male researchers receive
more research funding than female researchers.
K
athryn Colby, MD, PhD, noticed a problem with the speakers panel immediately. It was the opening session of the 2019 American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Mid-Year Forum, and afterward she came face to face with AAO President George Williams in an elevator. “Hey, George! Great opening session,” said Colby, Louis Block Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Chicago. “Only one thing missing.” Williams, she recalled, gave her a blank look. The elevator doors opened, and past AAO President Ruth Williams (no relation) stepped inside. “So, Ruth here is going to tell you the same thing,” Colby continued. Despite being in the presence of two highly accomplished women in the field, Williams didn’t pick up on what Colby was getting at. “Finally, I put him out of his misery and told him that there were no women on the panel,” Colby said. The next morning, Williams apologized for the oversight at the AAO’s board of trustees’ meeting and subsequently announced he would no longer participate in all-male speaking panels. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, made a similar pledge last year to avoid “manels,” and urged other scientific leaders to do the same.
Colby is the first — and still only — woman to chair a clinical department at the University of Chicago. When she arrived at the University in 2015, there were only five female chairs of academic departments of ophthalmology in the country. By 2019, Colby counted 20. Nevertheless, men still hold over 80 percent of the ophthalmology department chairs. “We have come a long way, but we are not there yet,” Colby wrote in “Sex Diversity in Ophthalmology Leadership in 2020: A Call to Action,” published in March in JAMA Ophthalmology. Though the editorial focuses on ophthalmology, her assessment applies throughout medicine. Women make up just over half of all medical students, and their numbers are increasing in some specialties traditionally dominated by men, such as urology. More women are rising in the academic ranks and being promoted to leadership positions. Still, gender inequity and disparities in pay and promotions persist: ■■
Female physicians earn 76 cents for every dollar earned by males, even after adjusting for age, rank and specialty, according to a recent Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) report.
■■
Women continue to be underrepresented in many specialties, including surgery — especially orthopaedic surgery — and radiology.
Attrition rate
for female surgical residents is
25% 15% is the rate for males.
16
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DIVISION