AWNings

The AWN Board of Directors met on October 3 to discuss plans for the coming year. The meeting was chaired by Helen Donis-Keller who took over as President on July 1. Helen outlined her goals for the year which include surveying members to see if AWN is meeting their needs and to determine whether members feel any changes should be made in the direction of AWN. In addition, Helen noted that the impact of AWN on the medical center is impaired by our limited financial resources. Therefore, she would like to consider ways of raising funds to allow AWN to bring more talented women scientists and physicians to WUMS to speak to the community at large.

The annual AWN Fall dinner will be held Tuesday Nov. 15 at Balaban's so watch your mailboxes for announcements of this event.

(excerpted from the July 25, 1994 issue of The Scientist)

It is encouraging that in some scientific fields-- biology, for example--women are now earning graduate degrees in proportionate numbers to men. Likewise encouraging are figures showing recent increases in the number of female Ph.D recipients: in 1993, 27 percent of all science, math and engineering doctorates were awarded to women.

Given the increasing presence of senior, qualified women, one might hypothesize, or at least hope, that as the numbers increase in the ranks, so will they at the top--that inequities at all organizational levels in academia, industry, and government will be rectified by growing strength in numbers. Unfortunately, women remain underrepresented in leadership positions. The fact that there currently are only two female deans of science in the entire United States academic community is by itself confirmation that the so-called glass ceiling remains firmly in place. Simply speaking, more than two decades of positive reinforcement and intervention aimed at enhancing recruitment and retention of women in science, while yielding many positive results generally, has not resulted in their having fair access to high-level administrative positions.

Why has so little progress been made thus far? Significant, I am convinced, is the lack in our organizations of a mentoring process that both grooms and promotes women for advancement. The most prevalent kind of mentoring occurs in voluntary and personal relationships on the job and is by tradition not nearly as available to women as it is to men. Consequently, the lack of this important preparation tends to preclude women as strong choices for high positions. A remedy for the absence of such informal grooming for women scientists might well be the implementation of formal management leadership training programs for them in all of our organizations.

Toward such a goal, all scientists must join creatively in the effort to narrow the substantial gap between women's qualifications and aspirations and their access to leadership positions. With significant numbers of women at the very top, changes in the culture of science would inevitably occur--changes that would be supportive of women's interests. A case in point is the attention now being paid to women's health research, a phenomenon that became a reality only during Bernadine Healy's recent tenure as the first woman director of the National Institutes of Health--and only after several influential congresswomen took strong positions on the issue.

Achievement of career equality for women must be the goal not merely of individuals, however, but also of institutions. Therefore, this organizational responsibility to realize lasting change must be carried by men as well as women. Furthermore, comprehensive efforts and partnerships are needed among government, academic, and corporate organizations; professional societies; and the media.

In my opinion, effective mechanisms to ensure the natural progression of women's careers to leadership status might include:

There is cause for optimism. With funding mostly from the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Association for Women in Science offered this past May in Washington, D.C., a leadership-development conference for women scientists and engineers. About 150 mid-career women from DOE labs, NASA centers, academic institutions, and corporations participated in this intensive, well-focused event. The enthusiastic turnout and the animated discussions that took place clearly indicated the need for such gatherings.

Our collective vision at AWIS (Association for Women in Science) is to reach an ever-larger population by offering leadership-development workshops on both regional and work-place-specific bases. We are launching a new era at AWIS; we believe that, at the same time, we will be playing a key role in launchng a new era for women in science.
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Women's Health and Medical School Curricula

by Nita M. Lowey

(excerpted from Academic Physician and Scientist, June/July 1994)

I am deeply concerned that traditional medical education has not adequately addressed women's unique health needs. Because of a lag in research on women's health, and because almost all medical schools use the 70-kg man as their model, women's health is not integrated into general training.

Instead, teaching of women's health is fragmented and disjointed throughout the educational process. The inadequate training in women's health results in gaps in physicians' knowledge about the special health needs of women, and results in a poorer quality of care for women.

For example, heart disease is the number-one killer of American women, yet it is frequently misdiagnosed in women because their symptoms maybe different from men's, and because many physicians have been taught only how coronary heart disease affects men. Another troubling example is that physicians are not taught how to detect domestic violence and to intervene on behalf of patients. Finally, women's health and bodies, aside from being neglected, are often treated derogatorily in medical school classes.

Training physicians to recognize and manage those conditions that affect only women, or that have a disproportionate effect on women, or that manifest different symptoms in women, is critical to ensuring that women receive optimal health care.

I am familiar with the debate within the community regarding the creation of a specialty in women's health. Such a specialty would require multidisciplinary training to enable the provision of comprehensive care to women. Those who oppose the creation of a specialty in women's health have argued that such a specialty would serve only to further marginalize women's health. Even those who support the creation of a specialty, though, acknowledge the importance of expanding the base of knowledge in women's health of all physicians. Therefore, I want to focus on a goal we can all agree on: improving training in the care of women by educationg all physicians in the full range of women's health issues and ending the fragmentation of women's health care. I realize that some medical schools may wish to go beyond fully integrating women's health teaching into general curricula and may provide special courses or even a specialty. This approach should not, however, deter such schools from ensuring that all physicians have sufficient training in women's health. For example, AMWA, the American Medical Women's Association, has already worked to develop an Advanced Curriculum on Women's Health, which provides continuing medical education for primary care physicians. This curriculum may provide assistance to schools addressing the gaps in knowledge of women's health throughout the female life span.

So what can we do to improve the teaching of women's health care? First, shine a bright light on the deficiencies in medical school curricula. To that end, I recently wrote a provision into minority health legislation directing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to assess the content of the educational programs of medical schools with respect to women's health conditions. The study will examine whether the curricula of medical schools include an appreciation of unique gender differences in health and disease and the results of recent innovations in women's health research. Second, I also want HHS to look at whether the teaching of women's health is considered in school accreditation standards, residency accreditation standards, and medical licensing examinations. Many schools may not focus on improving teaching about women's health until it is a consideration in accreditation, and students will not be concerned with learning about women's health until more questions are asked on the board and specialty exams.

I realize that these changes will not happen soon, but I feel it is important to expand the debate on women's health from a singular focus on research to teaching about women's health and the provision of health care to women. Women will never receive optimal care until all physicians are fully trained to meet their needs.

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Women's Health Update

by Helen Kornblum

Anne Colston Wentz, M.D. writes in a recent editorial in "The Journal of Women's Health" that "just as women's studies are taught in undergraduate years, so women's health must be a part of medical education." She also writes that "one of the major concepts that did not take long to surface was that women is an unfair term, and women's health is not all the same. ---We've come to understand that women are diverse and heterogeneous, and we have come to women's health and women's health care reform wars ready to change things and do battle for this concept." While this might seem obvious, considering that until recently the white male was considered the norm in medicine, this writer thinks it's a significant concept.

With the decline and fall of health care reform, women stayed strong. It was not abortion or women's health that brought it down. On October 13, 1994, Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues Co-Chair Patricia Schroeder issued this statement, "In 1992 the voters said they wanted change and as a result, the number of women in Congress nearly doubled, going from 31 to 55. The list of accomplishments we are releasing today represents a healthy return on the voters' investment, one that should finally put to rest the question, what difference does having more women in congress make?" And at the same time Caucus co-Chair Olympia Snowe said, "Hopefully, women's lives will be healthier, safer, and women will feel more economically secure as a result of the Caucus' work this year."

Some of the important accomplishments regarding women's health of the second session of the 103rd Congress include: The right to safe access to reproductive health clinics; improved access to comprehensive women's health services for women in the military; more than $500 million for research in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer in 1995 (a 17% increase over 1994 at the NCI); $193.4 million for Title X Family Planning Services (an increase of $12.4 million over 1994); $105.4 million for sexually transmitted disease screening, including activities to prevent infertility in women through improved screening and treatment of diseases like chlamydia (an increase of $5.6 million over 1994).

Misdiagnosis: Woman as a Disease is a collection of essays and short works on topics related to the women's health experience. Writers include Gloria Steinam, Anna Quindlen, Erma Bombeck and Ellen Goodman. Even Matuschka, the artist, photographer, who was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine exposing her chest after her mastectomy has a chapter. These women voice their reactions to such issues as the medicalization of childbirth, the "reshaping" of women by plastic surgery and many others. This is not an intellectual look at women's health, but a provocative one.

by Dr. Adele Wolfson, Wellesley College

(excerpted from ASBMB News Summer 1994 regarding a panel discussion held at the recent ASBMB meeting in Washington D.C.)

The panel discussion was sponsored by two subgroups of the Human Resources Committee: the Subcommittee on Equal Opportunities for Women, and the Subcommittee on Equal Opportunities for Minority Groups. The panelists were Dr. Shirley Malcom, head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Evelyn DeLiso, with Corning, Inc., and Dr. Robert Simoni, chair of the Dept. of Biological Sciences at Stanford University.

The panelists described some of their limited successes in recruiting and retaining women and/or minorities in science. Dr. Malcom spoke of the need for early intervention at the K-12 level, and for involvement in other segments of the community. Dr. DeLiso discussed Corning's efforts to prevent the departures of talented and well-trained scientists from the company. These efforts include establishment of day-care centers, after-school care, referrals for child- and elder-care, flexibility in time of the work day and career, and training for managers on avoiding overt and more subtle discrimination. Dr. Simoni told of his department's success in attracting women faculty, which he attributed largely to mentoring and other support available to newer members of the department.

In spite of these successes, there are obstacles still to be overcome. For example, Corning's programs have not made much difference in the retention of African-American scientists. In fact, the rate of attrition for these individuals is higher now than when programs aimed at improving the atmosphere for minorities were first begun. Stanford's efforts, too, have not led to the hiring of minority faculty.

Some points raised during the discussion may lay the groundwork for new approaches toward improving the climate for women and minorities in science:

- The numbers of students choosing careers in science (other than medicine) are quite low. If we hope to encourage women and minority students to choose science as a career, we must reach them earlier than their years in college.

- The traditional measures used to select top candidates is essentially "risk-free" to the institution. Looking beyond the usual criteria may yield candidates with much to offer even though they may need more mentoring and guidance than is usually offered.

- The issue of dual-career families must be addressed if we are to increase the number of women in permanent positions.

The Daddy Differential

In October the New York Times ran a front page article declaring that "men from traditional families, in which the wives stay at home to care for their children, earn more and get higher raises than men from two-career families". The report was based on two academic studies that found that among men with the same education, length of service and willingness to relocate, the raises and promotions go to those whose wives don't work. The authors of these studies argue that most companies are run by men whose wives don't work, and those bosses reward managers who fit into the same mold.

Although the findings are troubling, questions have been raised about the supporting data. For example, one study was based on 348 male managers at 20 Fortune 500 companies. Almost half of the sample was from two overwhelmingly male field, chemicals and basic manufacturing. Thus the question arises as to whether the findings are only relevent to conditions in heavy industries or whether the same problems occur in smaller companies, in government or in services, where most Americans work. In addition, while the studies examined the relationship between the husband's earnings and the wife's employment status, it is possible that the linkage runs the other way. Women married to high earners stay home because their husbands' higher incomes permit it.

Whatever the relationship between a husband's income and his wife choice of employment, everyone agrees that a wife at home can be a big asset--doing research, running errands and minding the kids so that the husband can work late. Say Prof. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Business School "To have a spouse that is nonworking is to have two people working on one career." But is a dual-career family being victimized or is it consciously weighing the costs and choosing a preferred strategy? Felice Schwartz, the mommy-track author, doubts that companies discriminate. "They just want single-minded executives," she says. All family-minded folks suffer alike.

(excerted from Newsweek Oct. 24, 1994)

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Last modified: October 19, 2007