Gender disparities may be widening for physicians due to COVID-19
Women doctors published fewer studies during stay-at-home orders, study
finds

Date:
January 24, 2022
Source:
Northwestern University
Summary:
Analysis of top-ranked primary care journal before and
during pandemic found pandemic disproportionately affected
women. Publications are 'hallmarks of tenure decisions' and
boost promotions and raises. Burnout, childcare and eldercare
responsibilities may be impacting publication rates.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
As people transitioned to working from home at the onset of the
coronavirus pandemic, journal submissions from academics increased across
the board. But a new study from Northwestern University found as men's scholarly productivity increased, women physicians were submitting less.


==========================================================================
The research reflects wider trends in academic publishing and is the first study to find such patterns in family medicine. The study contributes
to a growing body of evidence that the pandemic caused unique career disruptions for women as they became stretched thin during remote work,
causing stress, burnout and anxiety.

"The worry is that these problems will compound," said Katherine
Wright, the paper's corresponding author and the director of research
in the department of family and community medicine at Northwestern
University Feinberg School of Medicine. "As men were able to submit more,
they may benefit from more citations, promotions, funding and career opportunities as women fall further behind." The paper, "COVID-19 and
Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship," will be published
Jan. 24 in the journal Annals of Family Medicine.

Wright said the study was conceived in part because of observations
about her own department, where she saw roles changing dramatically
and many doctors attempting to play dual roles between childcare or
eldercare and work. Santina Wheat, co-first author and program director
of the Northwestern-McGaw family medicine residency at Erie Family Health Center in Humboldt Park, emphasized the impact of shifting schedules on
her own life.

"All of a sudden we were doing telehealth at all hours of the day,
and hours of the clinics shifted significantly and quickly," Wheat
said. "There was also always the sense you may need to cover for someone
else, which impacted your ability to think about the academic side -- or
mentor others to do the same." To conduct the study, the team performed
a bibliometric analysis of journal submissions to see how submission
rates changed during the pandemic. With access to the last five years
of submission data from the Annals of Family Medicine, the top-ranked
primary care journal, the scientists reviewed submission data before and
during the pandemic. They examined submission volume by gender in addition
to distribution of author's gender by submission type (such as original research versus special reports, which impact tenure differently).



==========================================================================
The paper found the Annals of Family Medicine received 41.5% of its
submissions from women during the early months of the pandemic --
the period analyzed by scientists -- marking a widening gender gap in
the field.

The paper warns the gap is "troubling" and may result in long-term repercussions for women in the medical field because of how tenure
decisions are made. Wright's hope is that adding this research to the
growing body of data will catalyze change in these fields.

"Publications are still the hallmark of tenure and promotion decisions,
so we want to make sure women aren't at risk of falling further behind,"
Wright said.

"Our hope is this data might be used by promotion and tenure committees
to reevaluate promotion criteria." For example, Wright said, women tend
to be more involved in creating curriculum and service, so weighting
activities like these more equally with publications could help balance
the scales. She added that there's both a childcare and eldercare crisis
in the country, and that parents and caretakers need strengthened support
to thrive in their roles. Wright said without intervention, these impacts
will reverberate beyond the pandemic.

Beyond advocacy, the team hopes to look at other metrics of
diversity in the data and see if other populations have been impacted disproportionately by the pandemic. They're also currently analyzing
the gender composition of peer reviewers, the gatekeepers of the work
accepted by scientific journals.

Deborah Smith Clements, chair of the department of family and community medicine, the Nancy Warren Furey Professor of Community Medicine and a professor of medical education, also is a co-author, along with Deborah
Edburg, a professor and physician at Rush University.

special promotion Explore the latest scientific research on sleep and
dreams in this free online course from New Scientist -- Sign_up_now_>>> ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Northwestern_University. Original
written by Lila Reynolds. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Katherine M. Wright, Santina Wheat, Deborah S. Clements, Deborah
Edberg.

COVID-19 and Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship. The
Annals of Family Medicine, 2022; 20 (1): 32 DOI: 10.1370/afm.2756 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220124194936.htm

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