AMSA Women's Empowerment Institute

[lpressley130]

AMSA Women's Empowerment Institute
February 9-12, 2007 * Washington D.C.

NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS
Application Deadline: December 15, 2006

Sponsored by the AMSA Advocacy Action Committee
Despite entrance into a new millennium, women, especially those from marginalized communities, continue to be under-represented in leadership positions within medicine. Although the number of women entering medical school continues to increase, vast gender inequalities persist within healthcare professions. Women currently comprise only 14% of tenured faculty at medical schools around the country, an increase of only 2% over the past two decades. Men are promoted to the position of assistant or associate professor twice as fast as their female colleagues. Today, an average of 21 women are full professors at each medical school, compared to 161 men in the same position. The under-representation of minority women within the health professions is particularly striking. Among female physicians, only 4% are Black, 2% are Hispanic, and 0.2% are Native American, despite the fact that these groups comprise 12.3%, 12.5% and 0.9%, respectively, of the total population.

We believe this lack of women in leadership positions is detrimental to both women's health and the medical profession as a whole. The Women's Empowerment Institute (WEI) is a three day seminar designed to address this disparity by bringing together a diverse group of female medical students, training them in skills necessary for leadership, developing a project to promote women's leadership in medicine and fostering a network of future leaders to provide ongoing support and development.

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[mshheaddoc]

This sounds like a great opportunity. I wish I could go!

 

[Faebinder]

more feminist propaganda

Maybe it is because women just don't work as many hours or as hard as their male colleagues due to family responsibilities.

Why penalize hard working men to promote a feministic discriminatory program?

Exactly... also realize that in the past, medicine used to be biased against women in general... it takes many years to become a tenured professor and a lot of published research... at least 10 year post residency/fellowship... So we are looking at people who went to med school in the 1980s. It's not a major surprise. It will take a while for the increased number of women entering the medical field to catch up in the tenure professorship.

 

[kelaskov]

This sounds like a great opportunity. I wish I could go!

I went to AMSA-WEI in Feb. It was great and I highly recommend it. AMSA has fabulous, dedicated leadership.

 

[dmniarb]

Before I started my 4th year rotations, I didn't really think much about the difference men and women in medicine. Now in my 2nd year of neurosurgery residency I am realizing how far we still have to go.
1. I am almost ALWAYS a nurse until proven otherwise to any patient, regardless of what I'm wearing or how I introduce myself.
2. In regards to some (but definitley not the majority ) of the nurses, I have to go out of my way to be nice to them otherwise they'll call me a bi///. If they call one of my male colleagues at 3am with an unimportant request that could have waited til the morning, my male colleagues can literally curse and them with every name in the book and it's no big deal/no hard feelings/"sorry to bother you." If they call me and I politely tell them this kind of thing can wait until the morning, they threaten to report me. I constantly feel like a second class citizen.
3. My male colleagues tend to put on an air of arrogance, which makes them seem confident and successful. My lack of arrogance is taken for a lack of competence. If she's nice, she must be compensating for a lack of skill/knowledge. I was acually told one of my professors when I was applying for medical school, "You will never make it as a doctor. You are too nice." But if I act any other way, people say, "who does she think she is?"


Thanks.
Dmniarb
It would be great to hear from others in predominantly male fields to get a sense of what obstacles you face and how you deal with them.

 

[lpressley130]

I think this happens to all women at all levels. I'm a respiratory therapist and have been for about 14 years. If one of my male colleagues and I entered a patients room, he was always addressed as the doctor, and I was the nurse. We would both have on a white lab coat, stethoscopes around our necks, but-he was the doctor. I see things just get a little worse from your comments. All I can say is keep fighting, girl!