Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-1-2025
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Despite recent gender parity of physicians entering pediatric cardiology, representation of women leaders lags their male colleagues.
OBJECTIVES: We sought to better understand the variation in women in leadership roles in pediatric cardiology.
METHODS: The gender of physicians in 16 prespecified leadership positions was collected by survey between July 2022 and January 2023 from pediatric cardiology programs with >5 cardiologists in North America. We analyzed the association of women leaders with center size (based on surgical volume), geographic region, presence of categorical fellowship program, and gender of division chief and department chair.
RESULTS: Across 99 centers, a median of 13 (Q1-Q3: 10-15) roles/center were identified. Women held 36.8% of all leadership roles and 35.1% of cardiology-specific roles. Only 13% of pediatric cardiology chiefs were women. Their programs had more women in subsection leadership roles than male-led centers (47% vs 36%, P = 0.028). A minority of leadership posts were shared among 2 physicians, yet more women than men shared their roles (5.4% women vs 2.5% men, P = 0.010). More men than women have dual leadership positions (15.1% men vs 9.9% women, P = 0.012). We found no association of center size, geographic region, presence of fellowship program, or gender of department chair with percent women leadership.
CONCLUSIONS: Women hold fewer leadership positions across most subsections of pediatric cardiology programs, with more equitable distribution at centers led by women division chiefs. Women are more likely to share a leadership position with another cardiologist and less likely than men to hold more than 1 leadership post concurrently.
Recommended Citation
Kipps, Alaina K.; Marshall, Audrey C.; Bansal, Neha; Bauser-Heaton, Holly; Choueiter, Nadine; Chowdhury, Devyani; Dalal, Aarti; Ehrlich, Molly; Freud, Lindsay R.; Jain, Supriya S.; Jone, Pei-Ni; Laraja, Kristin; Lopez-Colon, Dalia; Owens, Sonal T.; Ronai, Christina; Sachdeva, Ritu; Stiver, Corey; Sutton, Nicole; Vasilopoulos, Terrie; and Co-Vu, Jennifer, "Persistent Imbalance: Women’s Representation in North American Pediatric Cardiology Leadership Roles.persistent Imbalance: Women’s Representation in North American Pediatric Cardiology Leadership Roles" (2025). Department of Pediatrics Faculty Papers. Paper 178.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/pedsfp/178
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
PubMed ID
40713147
Language
English
Comments
This article is the author's final published version in JACC: Advances, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2025, Article number 101878.
The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacadv.2025.101878. Copyright © The Author(s).