Celebrating our extraordinary women physicians during Women in Medicine Month

I will never forget my high school counselor’s discouraging reaction when I shared my goal of becoming a physician. She admonished me to pursue a “more realistic” and traditional career. Like our School of Medicine students, I remained determined to forge ahead and achieve my dream of becoming a physician.?

As we commemorate September as Women in Medicine Month, we celebrate our determined and talented women physicians, medical students, residents, and fellows while at the same time being cognizant of how much more we must do, collectively, to achieve gender equity.

The number of women physicians in the U.S. has been consistently increasing and more than half of medical students nationally are women. About 58 percent of our medical school’s Class of 2027 are women. However, women remain underrepresented in senior leadership roles, where they have the greatest ability to affect change, and they still face challenges in the workplace.

A study published in Health Affairs in 2021 estimated that during their careers, women physicians in the U.S. earned an average of $2?million less than male physicians after adjustment for factors that may otherwise explain observed differences in income, such as hours worked, clinical revenue, practice type, and specialty.

While the Association of American Medical College’s 2023 data show that our medical school is in the 75th percentile for women faculty (as a percentage of faculty), we are in the 50th percentile for underrepresented faculty among all medical schools in the U.S. We are committed to identifying ways UC Davis Health can create and expand leadership pathways for women and underrepresented groups in the health sciences.

During this month’s Becker’s Hospital Review webinar, How to Foster More Women Leaders in Academic Medicine, I and other medical school leaders from across the country discussed how we can change the status quo.

UC Davis WIMHS Departmental Liaisons

UC Davis’ chapter of Women in Medicine and Health Sciences (WIMHS) is helping create such leadership pathways. With more than 300 women full professors at UC Davis Health, we are making progress but have much more work to do. WIMHS has developed a network of Departmental Liaisons to support women at UC Davis Health by actively participating in recruiting, retaining and supporting women in science and medicine. The program now has WIMHS Departmental Liaisons in more than 20 departments in the School of Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.?

Dean’s Gender Equity Advisory?Committee

The School of Medicine Dean's Gender Equity Advisory Committee, co-chaired by Melissa Bauman and Rachel Whitmer, includes faculty, staff and trainees, and has spent the past year identifying gender equity priority areas in UC Davis Health, forming subcommittees and SWOT?(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analyses.?The committee is in the final stages of preparing recommendations which will be shared broadly with the UC Davis School of Medicine community.?

Nov. 1 Fair Play Screening & Panel Discussion

On Nov. 1, WIMHS, the UC Davis Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and UC Davis Health’s Office for Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are co-sponsoring the Fair Play documentary screening, which addresses gender inequality at home. The film screening at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts will be followed by a panel discussion with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, filmmaker and founder of The Representation Project; LeShelle May, computer engineer; Renetta Garrison Tull, UC Davis vice chancellor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; and Pamela Wu, UC Davis Health director of news and media relations. Seating is limited and registration is required.

These and other programs are some of the ways we will continue to challenge and change the social norms around gender and gender inequality.

This month and every day, we celebrate and thank our trailblazing women faculty, medical students and trainees for their leadership and invaluable contributions. It’s also a call for redoubling our efforts across UC Davis Health by strengthening existing programs and creating new leadership pathways that make gender equity a reality.

Sincerely,

Susan Murin, M.D., M.Sc., M.B.A. Interim Dean, UC Davis School of Medicine Professor, Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine