Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Sexual Health, University of Michigan / 17.05.2016
Almost 1/3 of Women in Academic Medicine Report Experiencing Sexual Harassment
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Jagsi: There has recently been considerable media attention to certain egregious individual cases of sexual harassment, but it has been less clear whether these cases were isolated and uncommon incidents or whether they are indicative of situations more commonly experienced by academic medical faculty. An excellent survey study had previously documented that 52% of female faculty in 1995 had experienced harassment, but many of those women had attended medical school when women were only a small minority of the medical students (let alone faculty). More recent estimates of faculty experiences are necessary to guide ongoing policies to promote gender equity in an era when nearly half of all medical students are women.
We found that in a modern sample of academic medical faculty, 30% of women and 4% of men had experienced harassment in their careers.
(more…)