1. Advancing the “Ethical Workplace” APWIMS AND WISDOM Joint Fall Meeting
Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA
Associate Professor, Social Medicine
Associate Director, Center for Bioethics

2. The Problem
Women under-represented in positions of leadership across the professions, including academic medicine, where they represent:
15% of department chairs and 16% of deans
22% of tenured faculty and 21% of full professors
AAMC
5 of 25 Directors of NIH institutes
<20% of editorial boards of 3 leading medical journals
PIs for 3 of 25 initial CTSAs
5/31/2018

3. UNC SOM – Tenure and Rank (Clinical)
Tenure Status
Academic Rank
COSOW

4. UNC SOM – Clinical Department Chairs
COSOW 2013

5. Medicine’s “Leaky Pipeline”
Near parity among medical students –
Women have constituted ≥ 40% of accepted medical students since 1992 (47.4% in 2013; 48% at UNC)
Parity diminishes over time
15% of women vs. <1% of men plan to leave academic medicine (UNC Faculty Forward Survey, 2011)
5/31/2018

6. Faculty Diversity – UNC
42.3%
615 women
~85%ile
5/31/2018

7. Explanations Women have “opted-out” and headed for home
Pamela Stone, Opting Out?
There is an “ambition gap” between men and women
Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In
Women have been “pushed out” by a workplace culture which “values competition and devalues care.”
Anne Marie Slaughter, Unfinished Business and “Why Women Can’t Have it All”
AAMC – Women have constituted ≥ 40% of accepted applicants since 1991, the year I went to medical school (almost 25 years ago)

8. Faculty Forward Survey - UNC 2011
Male
Female
My job 85
Focus on Medical School Mission 66
Workplace Culture 74 73
Department Governance 64 62
Medical School Governance 44 36
Relationship with Supervisor 76
Growth Opportunities 59 55
Promotion Equality 77 61
Collegiality and Collaboration 75
Compensation and Benefits 58
Faculty Recruitment/Retention 71 68
Clinical Practice 57 51
N=777 (49.5% response rate)
5/31/2018

9. What would be an “ethical workplace”?
Sincere commitment to meritocracy
Attention to the ways gender shapes how faculty are assessed, supported and promoted, including factors relevant to career decisions [e.g., formal institutional policies, departmental structure, tacit expectations, perceived opportunities, interpersonal dynamics]
Efforts to promote formal equality as well as substantive equality
5/31/2018

10. 5/31/2018

11. Project – The Ethical Workplace
DESCRIPTION
Qualitative study to explore how faculty experience work life at UNC; factors relevant to career/leadership decisions
ASPIRATION
Ethical analysis – drawing on ethics, feminist theory, literature and public debate about women in leadership
INTERVENTION
Develop, pilot test, and implement concrete intervention
CHANGE!?

12. Thank you! alyerly@email.unc.edu
5/31/2018