Objective:
To evaluate the status of men and women faculty in academic general internal medicine, including their professional training,
faculty responsibilities, research performance, academic rank, and compensation, to determine whether systematic differences
exist by gender.
Design/setting:The authors analyzed responses to a 55-part questionnaire sent to all full-time general internal medicine faculty at the major
teaching hospitals in the United States. Unadjusted means were generated for men versus women faculty in demographics, training
background, hours of work, professional time allocations, institutional support, professional self-assessment, research performance,
academic rank, and compensation. Means were recalculated after adjusting for other variables using multivariate methods.
Results:The authors found no significant difference in the frequency of fellowship training between men and women faculty. Women and
men perform similar professional activities, but even after multivariate adjustment, women devote less time to research and
perceive less research skill and institutional support for their research, but have similar numbers of grants, abstracts,
and publications in refereed journals and have similar academic ranks. Women faculty, however, receive lower compensation
than do men faculty, even after adjustment.
Conclusion:While the characteristics of men and women faculty are quite similar, including those defining their academic productivity,
important differences exist in research time, perceived institutional support, and compensation. These differences cannot
be explained by such obvious factors as age differentials, academic rank, or hours of work per week.
Key words women - general internal medicine - rank - research - compensation - faculty
Presented at the annual meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine, Arlington, Virginia, April 26–28, 1989.
Supported in part by a grant from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.