Sticky Floor, Broken Ladder, and Glass Ceiling in Academic Obstetrics and Gynecology in the United States and Canada

Objective To evaluate the gender proportion in academic obstetrics and gynecology faculty across the United States and Canada and further assess any gender differences in academic ranks, leadership positions, and research productivity. Methods Obstetrics and gynecology programs were searched from the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database (FREIDA) (n=145) and the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) (n=13) to compile a database of gender and academic profiles of faculty physicians with Medical Doctorate (MD) or Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degrees. Elsevier's Scopus was used to gather individual research metrics for analysis, and the data were analyzed using Strata v14.2 (StataCorp. 2015. Stata Statistical Software: Release 14. College Station, TX: StataCorp LP). Results Among 3556 American and 689 Canadian Obstetrics and Gynaecology physicians, women comprised 60.9% and 61.4%, respectively. Among physicians with professorships, women physicians comprised 36.2% and 35.8% in the United States and Canada, respectively. When examining the gender proportion of physicians in leadership roles, women comprised 52.2% and 56.1% in the United States and Canada, respectively. The h-index between men and women physicians showed a significant difference overall in both the United States (p<0.001) and Canada (p<0.001), indicating that men have higher academic output. Conclusion Although the overall proportion of women academic staff physicians in Obstetrics and Gynaecology is higher than the proportion of men, there are more men who had a full professor rank. Men also had higher academic productivity.