To adequately address gendered issues of sexual harassment, wage gaps, and leadership inequities, medical institutions must interrogate medical education. Feminist theories can help to understand how power operates within our classrooms and at the bedside.
In August 2018, the president of the World Bank noted that “‘Human capital’—the potential of individuals—is going to be the most important long-term investment any country can make for its people's future prosperity and quality of life”. Nevertheless, leaders and practitioners in academic science and medicine continue to be unaware of and poorly educated about the nature, extent, and impact of barriers to full participation of women and minorities in science and medicine around the world.
The purpose of this Review is to provide evidence for why gender equality in science, medicine, and global health matters for health and health-related outcomes. We present a high-level synthesis of global gender data, summarise progress towards gender equality in science, medicine, and global health, review the evidence for why gender equality in these fields matters in terms of health and social outcomes, and reflect on strategies to promote change.
Improving the career progression of women and ethnic minorities in public health universities has been a longstanding challenge, which we believe might be addressed by including staff diversity data in university rankings. We present findings from a mixed methods investigation of gender-related and ethnicity-related differences in career progression at the 15 highest ranked social sciences and public health universities in the world, including an analysis of the intersection between sex and ethnicity.
