Is Gender Associated With Success in Academic Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery?

Several studies of surgical specialties have shown disparities in measures of research productivity and academic rank between female and male surgeons. The purpose of this work was to measure the role of surgeon gender in academic success in oral and maxillofacial surgery. We performed a cross-sectional study of full-time academic oral and maxillofacial surgeons (OMSs) in the United States as of June 2017. The primary study variable was surgeon gender (male or female). The primary outcome variable was research productivity assessed using 2 different parameters: 1) h index (number of publications h with at least h citations each) and 2) academic rank. The other study variables were demographic characteristics potentially related to the outcome measures. Descriptive, bivariate, and regression statistics were computed. The study sample comprised 306 full-time academic OMSs, 53 (17.3%) of whom were women. On average, female OMSs had shorter academic careers (mean time since completion of training, 11.0 ± 8.2 years for female OMSs vs 22.0 ± 14.1 years for male OMSs; P