RELATION OF FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES AND GENDER TO THE PRODUCTIVITY AND CAREER SATISFACTION OF MEDICAL-FACULTY

Background: Studies have found that female faculty publish less, have slower career progress, and generally have a more difficult time in ac ademic careers than male faculty. The relation of family (dependent) r esponsibilities to gender and academic productivity is unclear. Object ive: To describe dependent responsibilities by gender and to identify their relation to the aspirations, goals, rate of progress, academic p roductivity, and career satisfaction of male and female medical school faculty. Design: 177-item survey questionnaire. Setting: 24 randomly selected medical schools in the contiguous United States.Participants: 1979 respondents from a probability sample of full-time academic medi cal school faculty. Measurements: The main end point for measuring aca demic productivity was the total number of publications in refereed jo urnals. Perceived career progress and career satisfaction were assesse d by using Likert scales. Results: For both male and female faculty, m ore than 90% of time devoted to family responsibilities was spent on c hild care. Among faculty with children, women had greater obstacles to academic careers and less institutional support, including research f unding from their institutions (46% compared with 57%; P < 0.001) and secretarial sup port (0.68 full-time equivalents compared with 0.83 fu ll-time equivalents; P = 0.003), than men. Compared with men with chil dren, women with children had fewer publications (18.3 compared with 2 9.3; P < 0.001), slower self-perceived career progress (2.6 compared w ith 3.1; P < 0.001), and lower career satisfaction (5.9 compared with 6.6; P < 0.001). However, no significant differences between the sexes were seen for faculty without children. Conclusions: Compared with fe male faculty without children and compared with men, female faculty wi th children face major obstacles in academic careers. Some of these ob stacles can be easily modified (for example, by eliminating after-hour s meetings and creating part-time career tracks). Medical schools shou ld address these obstacles and provide support for faculty with childr en.