Abstract
Background: In response to the landmark report “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering,” the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health issued a request for applications that funded 14 R01 grants to investigate causal factors to career success for women in STEM. Following completion of the 4-year grants, the grant PIs formed a grassroots collaborative, the Research Partnership on Women in Science Careers. Objective: To summarize the work of the Research Partnership, which resulted in over 100 publications. Methods: We developed six themes to organize the publications, with a “Best Practices” for each theme at the end of each section: Barriers to Career Advancement; Mentoring, Coaching, and Sponsorship; Career Flexibility and Work-Life Balance; Pathways to Leadership; Compensation Equity; and Advocating for Change and Stakeholder Engagement. Results: Women still contend with sexual harassment, stereotype threat, a disproportionate burden of family responsibilities, a lack of parity in compensation and resource allocation, and implicit bias. Strategies to address these barriers using the Bronfenbrenner ecological model at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, academic community, and policy levels include effective mentoring and coaching, having a strong publication record, addressing prescriptive gender norms, positive counter-stereotype imaging, career development training, networking, and external career programs such as the AAMC Early and Mid-Career Programs and Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM). Conclusions: Cultural transformation is needed to address the barriers to career advancement for women. Implementing the best practices noted of the work of the Research Partnership can help to achieve this goal.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 356-362 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Journal of general internal medicine |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 15 2019 |
Funding
In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine published a landmark report: BBeyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.^3 Produced by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy and chaired by the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, the document underscored that Bthe United States economy relies on the productivity, entrepreneurship, and creativity of its people… to maintain its scientific and engineering leadership amid increasing economic and educational globalization, the United States must aggressively pursue the innovative capacity of all its people—women and men.^ In response, the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health funded 14 R01 grants to investigate causal factors to career success for women in Academic Science and Engineering. The 14 NIH R01 Research Partnership grantees (listed online in Appendix 1) embarked on studies, some of which defined the current issues for women, and others that tested interventions to address barriers. As of this writing, over 100 manuscripts, including a special collection in 2016 in Academic Medicine4 and in 2017 in the Journal of Women’s Health5, have been published by the grantees. BACKGROUND: In response to the landmark report BBeyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering,^ the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health issued a request for applications that funded 14 R01 grants to investigate causal factors to career success for women in STEM. Following completion of the 4-year grants, the grant PIs formed a grassroots collaborative, the Research Partnership on Women in Science Careers. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the work of the Research Partnership, which resulted in over 100 publications. METHODS: We developed six themes to organize the publications, with a BBest Practices^ for each theme at the end of each section: Barriers to Career Advancement; Mentoring, Coaching, and Sponsorship; Career Flexibility and Work-Life Balance; Pathways to Leadership; Compensation Equity; and Advocating for Change and Stakeholder Engagement. RESULTS: Women still contend with sexual harassment, stereotype threat, a disproportionate burden of family responsibilities, a lack of parity in compensation and resource allocation, and implicit bias. Strategies to address these barriers using the Bronfenbrenner ecological model at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, academic community, and policy levels include effective mentoring and coaching, having a strong publication record, addressing prescriptive gender norms, positive counter-stereotype imaging, career development training, networking, and external career programs such as the AAMC Early and Mid-Career Programs and Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM).
Keywords
- biomedical sciences
- institutional climate
- leadership
- mentoring
- women’s careers
- work-life balance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Internal Medicine