Advancing Women’s Health and Women’s Leadership With Endowed Chairs in Women’s Health

Gender-based bias and conflation of gender and status are root causes of disparities in women's health care and the slow advancement of women to leadership in academic medicine. More than a quarter of women physicians train in internal medicine and its subspecialties, and women physicians almost exclusively constitute the women's health focus within internal medicine. Thus, internal medicine has considerable opportunity to develop women leaders in academic medicine and promote women's health equity.To probe whether holding an endowed chair-which confers status-in women's health may be an effective way to advance women leaders in academic medicine and women's health, the authors explored the current status of endowed chairs in women's health in internal medicine. They found that the number of these endowed chairs in North America increased from 7 in 2013 to 19 in 2015, and all were held by women. The perceptions of incumbents and other women's health leaders supported the premise that an endowed chair in women's health would increase women's leadership, the institutional stature of women's health, and activities in women's health research, education, and clinical care.Going forward, it will be important to explore why not all recipients perceived that the endowed chair enhanced their own academic leadership, whether providing women's health leaders with fundraising expertise fosters future success in increasing the number of women's health endowed chairs, and how the conflation of gender and status play out (e.g., salary differences between endowed chairs) as the number of endowed chairs in women's health increases.