Women in academic medicine - challenges and issues
September 2004
Introduction
The BMA’s Medical Academic Staff Committee (MASC) is working to promote the recruitment and retention of clinical academic staff, and particularly, engaging women with academic medicine. Currently, academic medicine is failing to attract and retain women. Women are currently under-represented as clinical researchers, full-time academics and heads of departments, yet a growing proportion of the medical workforce. The BMA is keen to address this under-representation of women in the medical academic workforce and is undertaking research in this area in an attempt to better understanding the issues. The aim of the research is to identify both barriers that exist and good practice in pursuing a medical academic career.
Method
In order to explore the challenges and issues facing women in academic medicine in some depth, two focus groups were held during July 2004. An invitation to attend the focus groups was sent to a random sample of women working in a medical academic position, ranging from junior researchers to professors. Both of the focus groups were held in London, which may have biased the origin of participants towards those based in London and the South East. Nonetheless, participants from across the United Kingdom were in attendance (see appendix 1). A total of 26 women engaged in a range of academic medical activities attended the focus groups. This report summarises the key issues raised by participants involved in the focus group discussions and illustrates these issues with verbatim comments, where possible.
Issues facing women in academic medicine
Participants in both focus group were asked to discuss their experiences and concerns regarding women working in academic medicine. A range of concerns were raised from the outset. Whilst many issues were gender related, others were non-gender specific, but related specifically to academic medicine. The following comments reflect these perceptions:
‘I guess you're reluctant to accept that...it almost seems like an excuse saying that it’s anything to do with your gender, but actually if I think about it, I mean there are a lot of issues there. I thought it was just me not being very good’.
‘There’s always this tension I think in academic medicine between people wanting you to be a clinician and being academic, and to try and do both is getting increasingly hard.’
Several of the participants commented that they had been reluctant in the past to participate in forums discussing gender-related problems in the workplace, as the issues have often focused on family commitments and childcare issues. Several participants suggested that the problems and concerns facing women in academic medicine are not always related to having children and family commitments and welcomed the opportunity to discuss these in more depth.
‘But I’ve always shied massively away from any women’s forums about anything, because I don’t have children, and so many of the women in science issues are around children and families, so I’ve always thought that those aren’t my issues. But now I’m starting to realise there are actually another set of issues which are you don’t have to have children to be having problems’.
‘Until recently I’ve always felt that BMA’s women’s issues have been about childcare and, as I don’t have children, I felt that I haven’t really had my female views represented, so I’m really glad that we’re talking about issues that go beyond childcare, as well as childcare’.
A range of challenges facing clinical academic women were identified in the focus group discussions. Other issues raised were gender independent, but specific to academic medicine. The key issues are now summarised and illustrated by verbatim comments where possible.