Women in Academic Pathology: Pathways to Department Chair

Mary F Lipscomb; David N Bailey; Lydia P Howell; Rebecca Johnson; Nancy Joste; Debra G B Leonard; Priscilla Markwood; Vivian W Pinn; Deborah Powell; MarieAnn Thornburg; Dani S Zander

doi:10.1177/23742895211010322

Women in Academic Pathology: Pathways to Department Chair

Acad Pathol. 2021 Apr 28:8:23742895211010322. doi: 10.1177/23742895211010322. eCollection 2021 Jan-Dec.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
² Department of Pathology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
³ Department of Pathology, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA.
⁴ American Board of Pathology, Tampa, FL, USA.
⁵ Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Robert Larner, MD College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA.
⁶ Association of Pathology Chairs, Wilmington, DE, USA.
⁷ National Institutes of Health (retired), Washington, DC, USA.
⁸ Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
⁹ Posada Consulting Inc., Santa Fe, NM, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Pathology, University of Cincinnati, OH, USA.

Abstract

The Association of Pathology Chairs, an organization of American and Canadian academic pathology departments, has a record percent of women department chairs in its ranks (31%), although still not representative of the percent of women pathology faculty (43%). These women chairs were surveyed to determine what had impeded and what had facilitated their academic advancement before becoming chairs. The 2 most frequently identified impediments to their career advancement were heavy clinical loads and the lack of time, training, and/or funding to pursue research. Related to the second impediment, only one respondent became chair of a department which was in a top 25 National Institutes of Health-sponsored research medical school. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said that they had experienced gender bias during their careers in pathology, and 31% identified gender bias as an important impediment to advancement. The top facilitator of career advancement before becoming chairs was a supportive family. Strikingly, 98% of respondents have a spouse or partner, 75% have children, and 38% had children younger than 18 when becoming chairs. Additional top facilitators were opportunities to attend national meetings and opportunities to participate in leadership. Previous leadership experiences included directing a clinical service, a residency training program, and/or a medical student education program. These results suggest important ways to increase the success of women in academic pathology and increasing the percent of women department chairs, including supporting a family life and providing time, encouragement and resources for research, attending national meetings, and taking on departmental leadership positions.

Keywords: advancement in academic medicine; gender bias; gender diversity; leadership development in academic medicine; women pathology department chairs.