Lancet
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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. This scoping review maps the four main ways in which feminist theory has been applied to medical education and medical education research-namely, critical appraisal of what is taught in medical curricula; exploration of the experiences of women in medical training; informing pedagogical approaches to how medicine is taught; and finally, medical education research, determining both areas of inquiry and methodologies. Feminist theory has the potential to move clinicians and educators from theory to action, building bridges of solidarity between the medical profession and the community it is called to serve.
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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. This lack of awareness and education results in failures to fully mobilise the human capital of half the population and limits global technological and medical advancements. ⋯ We survey approaches and insights that have helped to identify and remove systemic bias and barriers in science and medicine, and propose tools that will help organisational change toward gender equality. We describe tools that include formal legislation and mandated quotas at national or large-scale levels (eg, gender parity), techniques that increase fairness (eg, gender equity) through facilitated organisational cultural change at institutional levels, and professional development of core competencies at individual levels. This Review is not intended to be an extensive analysis of all the literature currently available on achieving gender equality in academic medicine and science, but rather, a reflection on finding multifactorial solutions.
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Women's representation in science and medicine has slowly increased over the past few decades. However, this rise in numbers of women, or gender diversity, has not been matched by a rise in gender inclusion. ⋯ This Review draws on several decades of research in the field of management and its cognate disciplines to identify five myths that continue to perpetuate gender bias and five strategies for improving not only the number of women in medicine, but also their lived experiences, capacity to aspire, and opportunity to succeed. We argue for a move away from a singular focus on interventions aimed at targeting individual attitudes and behaviour to more comprehensive interventions that address structural and systemic changes.