Women in academic psychiatry
05 August 2010
Over the past 40 years, the proportion of women accepted into medical school in the UK has risen to 65 per cent indicating determination, ambition and ability amongst future female medical professionals. Despite this, women are under-represented in senior positions across academic medicine, including psychiatry.
Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s have reviewed the literature and report that very few women make it into the upper echelons of psychiatric academia. They reviewed factors contributing to this lack of career progression which included family commitments, role conflict, discrimination, organisational barriers, and lack of networking opportunities, role models and mentors.
The report concluded that women are clearly not academically inferior, citing evidence which suggests that women are actually performing better in exams than their male counterparts earlier in their careers. Interestingly, the editorial said, '…many women report anecdotally that despite academic and professional accomplishments, they have a persistent sense that somehow they do not deserve their status/position...'; a phenomenon known as ‘the impostor phenomenon’.
The report highlights that women will often take longer to reach professorial level and this may be attributed to competing family commitments. Promotion in academia is granted on the merit of significant research achieved and many women may find it difficult to attain these goals when having to work part-time to accommodate childcare. Another barrier accentuated by family commitments is a lack of opportunity for informal networking and a lack of suitable role models in senior positions.
Joint lead author, Dr Rina Dutta, from the IoP, said: 'Mentoring has been shown to be a popular and feasible intervention which can improve the success of those perceived as disadvantaged groups (in this case women) by providing role models and ‘off line’ career guidance, helping to balance competing career demands, and offering networking opportunities which they might not otherwise have accessed'.
The study does find that there is still evidence of gender discrimination in medical practice. The paper cites the results of one survey in the US whereby 77% of women faculty reported gender-based discrimination and harassment which may be one part of the complex picture of why women are underrepresented in senior roles in academia.
'Women in academic psychiatry' was published in this month's The Psychiatrist, to read the paper in full, please follow the link: http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/34/8/313