C. Shaw1, C. Le1, T. Loftus1, A. Filiberto1, G. A. Sarosi1, A. Iqbal1, S. Tan1 1University Of Florida,Department Of Surgery,Gainesville, FL, USA
Introduction: The role of gender-specific mentorship in career choice for women has been well documented. Although women are increasingly represented in American surgery, national data on fellowship program leadership are unknown. The academic rank and gender of surgical fellowship Program Directors (PDs) were analyzed with the null hypothesis that women and men would be equally represented and hold similar academic ranks among various fellowship programs.
Methods: Demographics and academic ranks for fellowship PDs, Associate Program Directors (APDs), and department faculty were collected for 811 surgical fellowship programs across 14 specialties in the United States. The academic rank and gender of PDs were compared by Fisher’s Exact test. Proportions of women PDs and fellows were then compared to median compensation for the specialty.
Results: Women represented 23% of all departmental faculty, 18% of all fellowship PDs, and 14% of all APDs. Fifteen percent of all PDs were Assistant Professors (20% women vs. 13% men, p=0.052), 29% were Associate Professors (32% women vs. 29% men, p=0.367), 37% were Professors (30% women vs. 39% men, p=0.038), and academic rank was unknown for 19%. The percentage of women PDs was highest in Breast Surgery (65%), Endocrine Surgery (35%), Burn Surgery (25%), and Acute Care Surgery (25%), and lowest in Thoracic Surgery (6%), Minimally Invasive Surgery (6%), Vascular Surgery (11%), and Plastic Surgery (13%). This largely paralleled the percentage of women fellows within these programs with women being overrepresented in subspecialties with lower compensation.
Conclusion: Women surgeons are underrepresented among surgical fellowship PDs, especially in high-income specialties. It remains unclear whether women surgeons achieve PD appointments at lower academic ranks, or if promotion of fellowship PDs is influenced by gender. Lack of same-sex mentorship could be a component of the difficulty in attracting women to high-paying subspecialties, further widening the gender pay gap among surgeons and perpetuating the lack of women in the pipeline to leadership within these fields.