RESUMEN
This chapter explores the chronology of challenges faced by women in pediatrics from childbearing and adoption through motherhood and eldercare. At the outset of their careers, women in medicine commonly face reproductive barriers with one in four reporting a diagnosis of infertility. During the childbearing process, the AAP recommended 12-week duration of paid maternity leave is unfortunately not a typical option for women physicians, with most resident physicians taking only 6.6 weeks of leave and academic faculty taking an average of 8.6 weeks. Challenges continue for women pediatricians when they return after family leave, facing barriers related to inadequate support for breast pumping and childcare. As careers progress, women pediatricians are more likely to report having increased household responsibilities and the provision of eldercare. About 17% of women pediatricians report having additional caretaking responsibility in addition to childcare for their own children. These additional caretaking roles negatively impact productivity and the ability to take leadership roles. This impact has been further exacerbated in the COVID-19 pandemic. To address these gender disparities, policies are needed that promote fair leave, access to childcare, and flexible scheduling and support for eldercare as well as providing adequate mentorship and support from physician colleagues. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on authorship gender in articles submitted to The Journal of Pediatrics. STUDY DESIGN: Using gender-labeling algorithms and human inspection, we inferred the gender of corresponding authors of original articles submitted in January-February and April-May of 2019 and 2020 noting those articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We used Pearson χ2 tests to determine differences in gender proportions during the selected periods in the US and internationally. RESULTS: We analyzed 1521 original articles. Submissions increased 10.9% from January-February 2019 to January-February 2020 and 61.6% from April-May 2019 to April-May 2020. Women accounted for 56.0% of original articles in April-May 2019 but only 49.8% of original articles in April-May 2020. Original articles focused on COVID-19 represented a small percentage of additional articles submitted in January-February 2020 (1/33 or 3.0%) and (53/199 or 26.6%) in April-May 2020 compared with the number of submissions in the same months in 2019. International male corresponding authors submitted a significantly larger proportion of original articles compared with international female corresponding authors in April-May 2020 compared to April-May 2019 (P = .043). There was no difference in corresponding author gender proportion in the US (US in April-May of 2020 vs April-May of 2019; P = .95). There was no significant difference in final dispositions based on corresponding author gender for original articles from 2019 and 2020 (P = .17). CONCLUSIONS: Original article submissions to The Journal increased in April-May 2020, with the greatest increase by international male corresponding authors. The majority of the submission growth was not related to COVID-19.