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Women in Academic Medicine report

July 2007

Developing equality in governance and management for career progression - Executive summary and recommendations

Executive Summary
A full WAM report will be available in pdf format on stakeholder websites in Autumn 2007.

Stakeholders
The Women in Academic Medicine (WAM) Project was funded through the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE) Leadership, Governance and Management Fund, the British Medical Association’s Health Policy and Economic Research Unit (HPERU) and the Medical Academic Staff Committee (MASC), Imperial College London and the Medical Women’s Federation. The Project was also supported by the Athena Project and the Medical Schools Council (formerly Council of Heads of Medical Schools).

WAM Team
The Women in Academic Medicine project was devised, managed and completed by a team led by Dr Anita Holdcroft (Imperial College London), and ably assisted by Tania Fisher (HPERU, BMA) and Jaspal Sunita Kaur-Griffin (project manager, Imperial College London).

Foreword to the WAM report
As the champions of this project, that collected data for the first time across all sectors of the medical profession in order to identify strategic issues relating to gender inequalities in academic medicine, we would endorse the listed recommendations. They are based on quantitative and qualitative evidence collected by this study from hundreds of doctors from Higher Education institutes and medical specialties. The university sector would be well advised to further develop the strengths and economic advantages that medical women could contribute to accelerating progress in academic research, teaching and management. We therefore recommend this report to the University community, to professionals and to politicians for action.

Academic medicine is the work undertaken by clinicians with responsibilities to both their University and their NHS Hospital Trust. They usually combine service delivery with research, teaching and / or administration (Royal College of Physicians, 2004).