Twenty years of silence: shining a light on gender disparities in academic medical leadership in India

Introduction Under-representation of women in senior academic medicine positions fails to mirror the over-representation of women entering medical schools. More women medical professors are needed as leadership role models to facilitate gender equity in the curriculum, research and medical services for national well-being. We seek to understand this gender gap in India by highlighting gender disparities in a premier Indian medical school and by advocating multi-level interventions in academic medicine. Methods We statistically analysed documentary data of all faculty ranks from 2004–2005 to 2022–2023 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi to illustrate women faculty’s representation in different disciplines (clinical, paraclinical and surgical) and leadership positions. First, we used trend analysis to project the time to gender parity across ranks. We then adopted cross-tabulation analysis to calculate the relative odds of women faculty holding academic ranks and leadership positions compared with their male counterparts. Results The findings revealed significant gender inequities across all faculty ranks. The total percentage of women faculty in 2004–2005 was 24.2% compared with 27.5% in 2022–2023. Leadership positions also showed significant gender disparity (χ 2 =18.20, p<0.0001115) as women occupied 16% of senior roles in the last two decades. The overall trend indicated a decline in the proportion of women in senior academic medical leadership roles over time. Conclusions This study highlights persistent gender disparities over 20 years for women faculty’s career trajectories in academic medicine. We propose six multilevel recommendations for gender parity in academic medical leadership in India.