Elke Schipani Bailey1, Elizabeth Coon1, Erika Driver-Dunckley2, Elizabeth Mauricio3, Lyell Jones1, Kelsey Smith1
1Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN, 2Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale AZ, 3Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville FL
Objective:
To characterize the career trajectory of neurology residency graduates to understand gender differences in academic neurology leadership.
Background:
The leaky pipeline in academic neurology leadership highlights a gender disparity. While gender equality is present amongst neurology residency program directorship at the national level, more departmental leaders identify as men.
Design/Methods:
Graduates of the Mayo Clinic Neurology residency programs in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida, were queried regarding sex and gender identity, time since graduation, and career outcomes including time worked, practice environment, leadership roles, and reasons for career changes.
Results:
62 alumni (45.2% women) completed the survey (16.3% completion rate). Most men (97%) worked full time in the first five years after residency and maintained this through 20 years post-graduation (80%), while the proportion of women working full time dropped from 92.9% in the first 5 years to 75% by 10 years and 57.1% by 20 years, revealing a significant difference between genders over career (p = 0.01). Despite these findings, greater than 70% of women respondents worked in academia through more than 20 years post-graduation, versus 45% of men. While 75-85% men graduates reported holding leadership roles throughout their career, less than half (46.4%) of women surveyed held leadership roles in the first five years of their post-graduate career with a rebound to similar rates to men at 10 and 20 years (72.2; 71.4%).
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that women graduates are more likely to work less than full time earlier than men and are less likely to hold leadership positions during the early stages of their careers. While women graduates surveyed remained in academic neurology to a greater degree than men, the leaky leadership pipeline for women in academic neurology prompts questions regarding early mentoring and the impact of full-time work on leadership opportunities.