Research, academic rank, and compensation of women and men faculty in academic general internal medicine

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the status of men and women faculty in academic general internal medicine, including their professional training, faculty responsibilities, research performance, academic rank, and compensation, to determine whether systematic differences exist by gender.

Design/setting: The authors analyzed responses to a 55-part questionnaire sent to all full-time general internal medicine faculty at the major teaching hospitals in the United States. Unadjusted means were generated for men versus women faculty in demographics, training background, hours of work, professional time allocations, institutional support, professional self-assessment, research performance, academic rank, and compensation. Means were recalculated after adjusting for other variables using multivariate methods.

Results: The authors found no significant difference in the frequency of fellowship training between men and women faculty. Women and men perform similar professional activities, but even after multivariate adjustment, women devote less time to research and perceive less research skill and institutional support for their research, but have similar numbers of grants, abstracts, and publications in refereed journals and have similar academic ranks. Women faculty, however, receive lower compensation than do men faculty, even after adjustment.

Conclusion: While the characteristics of men and women faculty are quite similar, including those defining their academic productivity, important differences exist in research time, perceived institutional support, and compensation. These differences cannot be explained by such obvious factors as age differentials, academic rank, or hours of work per week.