INCREASING WOMENS LEADERSHIP IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE

The project committee's overall findings are that even when they are a s academically productive, women remain significantly less likely than men to climb the academic ladder; the reasons women in academic medic ine are not succeeding at the same pace as men involve a complex combi nation of isolation, cultural stereotypes, and sexism, and difficultie s of combining family responsibilities with professional demands; acad emic medicine and the public would benefit from increasing women's lea dership share at all levels; and far-reaching systemic initiatives are needed to assure these increases. Some of the pressures intensifying within academic medicine, for instance to downsize departments and to reduce expenditures, certainly add to the challenges of developing mor e women leaders. But opportunities are apparent as well, especially to organizations and individuals taking the long view. As competition fo r patients and other resources mounts, institutions best able to manag e their human resources and to tap the leadership potential of women a s well as men will enjoy an edge. Pressures to become more customer-fo cused also mean greater attention to the needs of women patients (sinc e they outnumber men). But when women have no or only token representa tion on policymaking committees and boards, key perspectives will like ly be missing, compromising medicine's fulfillment of its social contr act as well as its excellence. The project committee directs a series of 15 recommendations to leaders of medical schools, teaching hospital s, academic medical societies, and the AAMC. Under the first major are a-developing and mentoring women faculty, administrators, residents an d students-the committee recommends the addition of temporal flexibili ty to faculty policies, provision of job search assistance to partners of candidates for major positions, and design of leadership developme nt programs, including workshops targeted at chief residents. The seco nd major area-improving pathways to leadership-recommends garnering th e perspectives of major search firm heads and current women chairs on improvements to be sought, offering guidance to search committees rega rding evaluation of nontraditional candidates, and helping department chairs improve their faculty development skills. The final area-foster ing readiness to change-urges medical centers to conduct self-assessme nts of organizational climate, the Liaison Committee on Medical Educat ion (LCME) to examine schools' experience in promoting women faculty, and the AAMC to integrate the work espoused here into its ongoing prog rams and planning. An implementation subcommittee will issue reports h ighlighting ''best practices'' and problem areas.