Gender imbalance amongst promotion and leadership in academic surgical programs in Canada: A cross-sectional Investigation

Background Women are underrepresented at higher levels of promotion or leadership despite the increasing number of women physicians. In surgery, this has been compounded by historical underrepresentation. With a nation-wide focus on the importance of diversity, our aim was to provide a current snapshot of gender representation in Canadian universities. Methods This cross-sectional online website review assessed the current faculty listings for 17 university-affiliated academic surgical training departments across Canada in the 2019/2020 academic year. Gender diversity of academic surgical faculty was assessed across surgical disciplines. Additionally, gender diversity in career advancement, as described by published leadership roles, promotion and faculty appointment, was analyzed. Results Women surgeons are underrepresented across Canadian surgical specialties (totals: 2,689 men versus 531 women). There are significant differences in the gender representation of surgeons between specialties and between universities, regardless of specialty. Women surgeons had a much lower likelihood of being at the highest levels of promotion (OR: 0.269, 95% CI: 0.179–0.405). Men surgeons were statistically more likely to hold academic leadership positions than women (p = 0.0002). Women surgeons had a much lower likelihood of being at the highest levels of leadership (OR: 0.372, 95% CI: 0.216–0.641). Discussion This study demonstrates that women surgeons are significantly underrepresented at the highest levels of academic promotion and leadership in Canada. Our findings allow for a direct comparison between Canadian surgical subspecialties and universities. Individual institutions can use these data to critically appraise diversity policies already in place, assess their workforce and apply a metric from which change can be measured.

University Teachers’ perspective on HEC’s Faculty Appointment Criteria: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

System devised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for Higher Education Institutions (HEI) aims to promote innovation and develop human capital. The efficiency of the system is ascertained if it could help in recruitment and retention of faculty members. Therefore, the study of faculty members' perspective on HEC’s Faculty Appointment Criteria (FAC) is needed to determine whether it motivates and facilitates them. This study reports the faculty’s perspectives on FAC. This qualitative interpretive phenomenological study gathers data using a semi-structured questionnaire for interviewing. The analysis reveals that the criteria do not cover the overall performance of faculty members and is only based upon minimum qualification, duration of service and number of publications. There is a dire need of reviewing the current appointment criteria and for that the involvement of all stakeholders is suggested to devise a profound scheme for better human resource development at HEIs of Pakistan.

Faculty Equity Issues: A Case Study in Policy and Employment Insecurity

<p>This case study examines equity issues (gender, race/ethnicity, and faculty appointment type) related to a specific policy that focuses on improving performance and ranking metrics at a public metropolitan research university. The overarching issues include the negative unintended consequences of focusing on short-term objectives at the expense of the university’s long-term mission. This article builds on a ten-year line of research regarding intentional change at large public metropolitan research universities.</p>

Faculty Equity Issues: A Case Study in Policy and Employment Insecurity

<p>This case study examines equity issues (gender, race/ethnicity, and faculty appointment type) related to a specific policy that focuses on improving performance and ranking metrics at a public metropolitan research university. The overarching issues include the negative unintended consequences of focusing on short-term objectives at the expense of the university’s long-term mission. This article builds on a ten-year line of research regarding intentional change at large public metropolitan research universities.</p>

Obtaining a faculty position in STEM at a research-intensive institution

Progressing from postdoctoral training to a STEM faculty appointment at a Research Intensive Institution (RII) is a daunting transition, and may be especially challenging to those who have followed a less-than-conventional path or whose peers have lost interest in academic careers. This article describes how to prepare for and progress through the application process for institutions in the USA, which takes approximately 1 year, including what to expect at each step and recommendations for a successful transition. The odds of success for any individual application are low, making good preparation and careful planning the more important, as does managing expectations to avoid becoming discouraged early in the process. The rewards of landing the faculty appointment at an institution that matches your professional and personal needs and for which you are best suited more than exceeds the effort required to attain it.

Bridging health disparities: a national survey of ambulatory care pharmacists in underserved areas

Background: There is a shortage of primary care medical providers, particularly in rural communities and communities of racial and ethnic minority groups. Clinical pharmacists can help fill gaps in care among these vulnerable populations. Objective: To identify characteristics of ambulatory care pharmacists that pursue and maintain employment within underserved areas. Methods: An original survey was distributed nationwide to ambulatory care clinical pharmacists in underserved settings. Respondent characteristics were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: Of the 111 completed surveys, a majority of respondents were White, non-Hispanic, female, with English as their only spoken language. A majority of pharmacists completed a clinical experience or specialized training focused on underserved care prior to their position. The top three motivators for pharmacists accepting their clinical position as well as staying at their job were passion for caring for underserved populations, the presence of a faculty appointment, or the freedom and flexibility of advanced clinical roles. Conclusions: With a large majority of our respondents identifying as White and unilingual, there remains a large opportunity to increase diversity in the clinical pharmacy ambulatory care workforce caring for underserved populations. There is an observed correlation between early experiential or specialized training in underserved care and pharmacists pursuing employment in these areas. Thus, one potential long-term strategy to diversify and grow the ambulatory care clinical pharmacist workforce in underserved settings is for clinical practice sites to partner with colleges of pharmacy to recruit and maintain quality individuals who can meet the needs of diverse patient populations as well as expand student and resident training opportunities in underserved settings.

Henry Taube. 30 November 1915—16 November 2005

Through a lifetime of increasingly broad and significant experiments and discoveries, Henry Taube became the world's premier mechanistic inorganic chemist (one who focuses on reaction pathways and reaction mechanisms produced during inorganic chemical changes). In his first faculty appointment, he examined the oxidation–reduction reaction and identified questions that could only be answered through precise experimentation. He then focused on the chemistry of transition metal complexes, laying out the details of what he called ‘inner sphere electron transfer’. He went on to compile a broad range of findings, leading to the elevation of inorganic chemistry to a major field of study. Taube earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD from UC Berkeley. After receiving his doctorate in 1941, he took a position as an instructor at Cornell University, where he remained until 1946. He then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he carried out seminal investigations of the electron transfer reactions between metal ion complexes. In 1962 he moved to Stanford, where he continued studies of electron transfer mechanisms. He also twice served as chair (1972–74; 1978–79) of the Stanford Department of Chemistry and subsequently was appointed the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in 1976. He formally retired from the faculty in 1986, but continued as an active scientist long afterward.

Is there gender bias in research grant success in social sciences?: Hong Kong as a case study

Despite growing attention to gender disparities in higher education, women in academia still receive less research funding and recognition. Previous research on this gender gap has focused on biomedical, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the West—relatively silent on social sciences and Asia. This study examined how well staff gender, submission rate, success rate, and amount per award could predict annual changes in the number and amount of grant funding for academic years 2015/2016–2020/2021 in the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Hong Kong, a leading institution in social sciences in Asia. Decomposition analysis revealed that, compared to men, women had higher submission rates, which significantly contributed to an increase in the number of awards for the University in recent years in two major funding mechanisms (namely, General Research Fund and Early Career Scheme), especially from 2019/2020 to 2020/2021. Women also outperformed men in the success rate in the Early Career Scheme (i.e., within the first three years of faculty appointment). Both submission rate and success rate contributed to changes in award number and the total amount for the University over time. Overall, women had a higher submission rate, successful rate, and amount per award than their male counterparts. We have identified good practices and distinctive contextual factors in Hong Kong that likely contribute to the lack of gender bias for research grant application results in Social Sciences.

The Patronage Dilemma: Allison Davis's Odyssey from Fellow to Faculty

This article analyzes the role of the Julius Rosenwald Fund in shaping the career of W. Allison Davis, a distinguished anthropologist who became the first African American appointed to the faculty of a mostly white university. From 1928 to 1948, the Rosenwald Fund ran an expansive fellowship program for African American intellectuals, which, despite its significance, remains largely unexamined in the scholarly literature. Davis tied his academic aspirations to Rosenwald Fund support, including for his early research and the terms of his faculty appointment. His experiences illustrate the dynamics inclusion and exclusion of African Americans in the academy; paternalistic promotion and strategic denial functioned as two sides of the same coin. Spotlighting Davis's negotiations, this article establishes how presumptions of racial inferiority guided Rosenwald patronage and demonstrates the extent to which the principles of meritocracy and expertise remained secondary concerns for those interested in cultivating African American intellectuals.