How Gender Impacts Career Development and Leadership in Rehabilitation Medicine: A Report From the AAPM&R Research Committee

Wagner AK, McElligott J, Chan L, Wagner EP II, Segal N, Gerber LH. How gender impacts career development and leadership in rehabilitation medicine: a report from the AAPM&R Research Committee.

Objective

To examine the role that gender plays in meeting the medical academic mission by assessing career development, leadership, and research productivity among rehabilitation researchers.

Design

Prospective, cross-sectional cohort study.

Setting

National survey.

Participants

Three hundred sixty rehabilitation professionals linked to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Association of Academic Physiatrists, and/or the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Intervention

Online or paper survey.

Main Outcome Measures

Research skills, resources and productivity, salary, leadership, and academic advancement.

Results

Results suggested that women rated themselves as being less skilled and having fewer resources for research compared with their male counterparts. Additionally, significantly fewer women applied for grant funding and had a lower publication rate compared with men. A proportionally larger number of women remained at lower academic ranks than men, and fewer women achieved senior academic ranks or positions of leadership. Even after adjusting for potential confounding factors, female sex remained a significant variable associated with lower salaries and lower manuscript production. Unlike men, female respondents tended to believe that being a woman was a negative factor with respect to academic advancement, leadership opportunities, salary, and resources.

Conclusions

Female rehabilitation researchers were less developed professionally than their male counterparts and saw themselves as disadvantaged. These findings have potential implications for attracting women into rehabilitation research and the rehabilitation research community’s efforts to sustain its academic mission, to improve research capacity, and to meet the needs of the 52 million people in the United States with disabilities.