Abstract
Purpose :
Women currently represent a quarter of all ophthalmologists, but the subspecialty of pediatric ophthalmology has one of the highest proportions of female practitioners within the field. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate sex disparities among academic pediatric ophthalmologists in the United States (US) with respect to publication productivity, academic promotion, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.
Methods :
This is a cross-sectional study of full-time academic pediatric ophthalmology faculty at all 113 allopathic US ophthalmology programs. Official institutional websites were accessed between January - March 2019, at which time data on the academic rank, residency year, and sex of each faculty member was obtained. Scopus was used to obtain academic productivity measures including h-index, and m-quotient, which is an academic productivity measure that also takes into account career duration. NIH funding for each faculty member was determined using the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools. Statistical analysis was completed using Chi-square tests for categorical values and a Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests for continuous variables.
Results :
A total of 389 full-time pediatric ophthalmology faculty members were identified. Of these, 194 (49.9%) were women and 195 (50.1%) were men. Women were more likely to be ranked Assistant Professor (64.4% vs. 46.2%, p = 0.003), while men were more likely to be ranked full Professor (34.9% vs. 13.9%, p < 0.001). Women had lower median h-indices (5.0 vs 8.0, p < 0.001) and shorter mean career duration (16.1 vs 24.8 years, p < 0.001), but similar median m-quotients (0.5 vs 0.5, p = 1.000). Among the pediatric ophthalmologists that received NIH funding (20 women and 27 men), women had similar mean grant funding compared to men ($3.9M vs. $3.7M, p = 1.000).
Conclusions :
Although the proportion of women ophthalmologists is similar to men within the pediatric subspecialty, disparities exist regarding academic appointment. Career duration contributes to the observed differences in h-index between women and men. Woman had similar NIH funding when compared to men.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.