Still a man's world, but why?

Abstract

Women are generally under-represented in many academic medical settings. Through a brief commentary on this issue, the present article discusses possible explanations for this under-representation as well as potential solutions. Issues examined include women in leadership positions, attrition out of academic medicine, salary imbalance between men and women, potential bias among both genders, and the need for cultural change. We believe this is an extremely important issue of which we all need to be aware and hope that articles such as this will aid in starting a crucial conversation about gender issues in academic medicine. © 2013 BioMed Central Ltd.