The attrition of women from the academic medicine advancement pipeline and their lack of proportionate representation in academic health centers is well established, and a number of causative factors have been well described. This collection of articles on gender equity in faculty health careers provides a context for the evolving assumptions on women's careers in biomedical science over the last 20 years and challenges traditional constructs about the “right” way to advance women's careers. As a consequence of being NIH RO1 grantees on the Office of Research on Women's Health RFA on Women's Careers in the Biomedical Sciences, the authors of this collection share how their research has been transformative of their own perspectives and contributed to the evidence base in the field. Collectively, our work demonstrates that achieving greater gender equity in the biomedical workforce requires challenging established beliefs and assumptions about women's careers that relate to critical mass, the need for mentors, obtaining more data, and other similar factors. Instead, we propose engaging an ecological framework for measures of culture and for the current climate for women in academic health centers that defines culture change as a shared understanding measured at a level that goes beyond the individual faculty member, seizing opportunities for change, and construing innovative and bold solutions.
The authors argue for the following: an understanding that the contributing factors impacting women's careers are more complex and intertwined than previously recognized and extend beyond considering single variables; defining a hospitable culture for women as a primary outcome of interventions and one that results in distinct yet inter-related pillars known to be supportive of women's careers (including work/life integration, addressing gender bias, providing adequate and sufficient resources and support, and creating paths and opportunities for leadership); and shifting from interventions developed and tested in single institutions to a matrix model for assessing and testing the impact of interventions that are both multi-institutional and multi-level (individual, interpersonal, academic community, etc.). The authors' collective work contends that by reducing barriers and transforming culture, women's careers in biomedical sciences can thrive and academic health centers can thereby improve recruitment and reduce attrition, enhance diversity, ensure success for their faculty, and sustain excellence in all missions.
