Does Chair of Surgery Gender Influence Divisional or Residency Program Director Gender Diversity?

Area of Science:

• Medical leadership
• Surgical department management
• Gender diversity in medicine

Background:

• Workplace diversity, including in surgery, enhances innovation and performance.
• Despite improvements, a gender gap persists in surgical leadership roles.
• The study addresses the increasing number of women in surgery chair positions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between surgery department chair gender and the gender of division and residency program directors.
• To determine if female surgery chairs are linked to greater gender diversity within their departments.
• To test the hypothesis that female leadership fosters increased gender diversity in surgical divisions.

Main Methods:

• Compiled a list of surgery departments from the Society of Surgical Chairs website.
• Analyzed the gender of department chairs, division directors, and residency program directors.
• Determined chair position term lengths using publicly available data.

Main Results:

• 10.7% of 178 surgery department chairs were female.
• No significant difference in female residency program director leadership between female-led and male-led departments.
• Departments led by male chairs had a higher percentage of female division directors (54.6%) compared to those led by female chairs (29.4%).
• Female chairs served significantly shorter terms than male chairs.

Conclusions:

• Female surgery department chair leadership was not associated with increased gender diversity in divisional leadership.
• Male-led surgery departments showed a trend towards greater representation of female division directors.
• Female chairs had shorter tenures compared to their male counterparts.