Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jan 27:3:1104597.
doi: 10.3389/fruro.2023.1104597. eCollection 2023.

Current state of female pediatric urologists at Societies for Pediatric Urology fellowship accredited programs

Natalie Armon  1   2 , Nora Thompson  1   2   3 , Daniel DaJusta  1   2 , Molly Fuchs  1   2 , Christina B Ching  1   2
Affiliations

Current state of female pediatric urologists at Societies for Pediatric Urology fellowship accredited programs

Natalie Armon et al. Front Urol. .

Abstract

Purpose: Gender inequities in medicine exist. Urology is a male dominated surgical specialty, with recent census data showing females represent only 10.9% of the workforce. We aimed to characterize the composition of female pediatric urologists across the Societies for Pediatric Urology (SPU) pediatric urology fellowship accredited programs, with particular attention to academic promotion and leadership positions.

Methods: In January 2023, we reviewed the official websites of the 27 pediatric urology programs listed on the SPU website as fellowship accredited programs. We identified pediatric urology surgery attendings, their gender, academic title, and if they were named a director of an internal program or had a hospital leadership position. We identified the program chief and fellow/resident program director. This data was associated with years in practice.

Results: Females represented 27.4% of pediatric urology surgical attendings. Four programs (14.8%) had no female attendings. Female staff were in practice a median shorter time than that of males (6 vs. 16 years, p<0.0001). A significantly higher proportion of females were assistant professors (62.2 vs. 35.2%; p=0.0041) while a significantly higher proportion of men were professors (37.0 vs. 18.9%; p=0.0421). Only one program (3.7%) had a female department/division chief. There was no difference between genders regarding being named a director of a program and/or having an identified hospital position of leadership. Female professors had been in practice a significantly shorter time than male professors (p=0.0003); women with an internal or hospital leadership position had also been in practice a significantly shorter time than males (p<0.001).

Conclusions: Females are represented more in SPU pediatric urology fellowship accredited programs than the overall urology workforce. Fewer female attendings are professors compared to male attendings; however, differences in promotion could be impacted by female attendings being earlier in their career. Hopefully with time, we will see more equal representation amongst genders in pediatric urology programs overall, but especially where we are training the next generation.

Keywords: academic medicine; fellowship and training; female; gender equity; pediatric urology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Characterization of career findings between genders of pediatric urology attendings at SPU fellowship accredited programs. (A) Years since graduating fellowship training (*p<0.0001). (B) Comparison across gender of those with professor and assistant professor academic titles (*p=0.0243; **p=0.0258). (C) Comparison across gender of those with “director” or “chief” in their listed titles.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison of having a title of director/chief or academic title and years in practice by gender (#p<0.0001; ##p=0.0003).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. American Urological Association. The state of the urology workforce and practice in the United States (2021) Available at: https://www.auanet.org/research-and-data/aua-census/census-results.
    1. Halpern JA, Lee UJ, Wolff EM, Mittal S, Shoag JE, Lightner DJ, et al. Women in Urology Residency, 1978-2013: A Critical Look at Gender Representation in Our Specialty. Urology (2016) 92:20–5. doi: 10.1016/j.urology.2015.12.092 - DOI - PubMed
    1. American Urological Association. 2021 Urol Residency Match Statistics. (2021). Available at: https://www.auanet.org/documents/education/specialty-match/2021-Urology-...
    1. Nam CS, Daignault-Newton S, Kraft KH, Herrel LA. Projected US Urology Workforce per Capita, 2020-2060. JAMA Netw Open (2021) 4(11):e2133864. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.33864 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cancian M AL, Thavaseelan S. The representation of women in urological leadership. Urol Practice. (2018) 5(2):228–32. doi: 10.1016/j.urpr.2017.03.006 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources