Gender, Race, and Ethnicity of US Academic Ophthalmology Faculty and Department Chairs From 1966 to 2021
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Importance: Workforce diversity is integral to optimal function within health care teams. Objective: To analyze gender, race, and ethnicity trends in rank and leadership among US full-time academic ophthalmology faculty and department chairs between 1966 and 2021. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study included full-time US academic ophthalmology faculty and department chairs registered in the Association of American Medical Colleges. Study data were analyzed in September 2023. Exposure: Identifying with an underrepresented in medicine (URiM) group. Main Outcomes and Measures: The main outcome measures were demographic (ie, gender, race, and ethnicity) changes among academic faculty and department chairs, assessed in 5-year intervals. The term minoritized race refers to any racial group other than White race. Results: There were 221 academic physicians in 1966 (27 women [12.2%]; 38 minoritized race [17.2%]; 8 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish [3.6%]) and 3158 academic faculty by 2021 (1320 women [41.8%]; 1298 minoritized race [41.1%]; 147 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish ethnicity [4.7%]). The annual proportional change for women, minoritized race, and Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish ethnicity was +0.63% per year (95% CI, 0.53%-0.72%), +0.54% per year (95% CI, 0.72%-0.36%), and -0.01% (95% CI, -0.03% to 0%), respectively. Women were underrepresented across academic ranks and increasingly so at higher echelons, ranging from nonprofessor/instructor roles (period-averaged mean difference [PA-MD], 19.88%; 95% CI, 16.82%-22.94%) to professor (PA-MD, 81.33%; 95% CI, 78.80%-83.86%). The corpus of department chairs grew from 77 in 1977 (0 women; 7 minoritized race [9.09%]; 2 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish ethnicity [2.60%]) to 104 by 2021 (17 women [16.35%]; 22 minoritized race [21.15%]; 4 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish ethnicity [3.85%]). For department chairs, the annual rate of change in the proportion of women, minoritized race, and Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish ethnicity was +0.32% per year (95% CI, 0.20%-0.44%), +0.34% per year (95% CI, 0.19%-0.49%), and +0.05% per year (95% CI, 0.02%-0.08%), respectively. In both faculty and department chairs, the proportion of URiM groups (American Indian or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Hispanic, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) grew the least. Intersectionality analysis suggested that men and non-URiM status were associated with greater representation across ophthalmology faculty and department chairs. However, among ophthalmology faculty, URiM women and men did not significantly differ across strata of academic ranks, whereas for department chairs, no difference was observed in representation between URiM men and non-URiM women. Conclusion & Relevance: Results of this cohort study revealed that since 1966, workforce diversity progressed slowly and was limited to lower academic ranks and leadership positions. Intersectionality of URiM status and gender persisted in representation trends. These findings suggest further advocacy and intervention are needed to increase workforce diversity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".