Persistent Imbalance: Women's Representation in North American Pediatric Cardiology Leadership Roles

Despite recent gender parity of physicians entering pediatric cardiology, representation of women leaders lags their male colleagues.

We sought to better understand the variation in women in leadership roles in pediatric cardiology.

The gender of physicians in 16 prespecified leadership positions was collected by survey between July 2022 and January 2023 from pediatric cardiology programs with >5 cardiologists in North America. We analyzed the association of women leaders with center size (based on surgical volume), geographic region, presence of categorical fellowship program, and gender of division chief and department chair.

Across 99 centers, a median of 13 (Q1-Q3: 10-15) roles/center were identified. Women held 36.8% of all leadership roles and 35.1% of cardiology-specific roles. Only 13% of pediatric cardiology chiefs were women. Their programs had more women in subsection leadership roles than male-led centers (47% vs 36%, P = 0.028). A minority of leadership posts were shared among 2 physicians, yet more women than men shared their roles (5.4% women vs 2.5% men, P = 0.010). More men than women have dual leadership positions (15.1% men vs 9.9% women, P = 0.012). We found no association of center size, geographic region, presence of fellowship program, or gender of department chair with percent women leadership.

Women hold fewer leadership positions across most subsections of pediatric cardiology programs, with more equitable distribution at centers led by women division chiefs. Women are more likely to share a leadership position with another cardiologist and less likely than men to hold more than 1 leadership post concurrently.