Women in Biomedical Careers

In January 2007, then NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., established and co-chaired The NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers in response to the 2006 National Academies report Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. The report found that women face institutional and environmental barriers to advancement at all career stages and called for broad, innovative action from universities, professional societies, and government funding agencies. The Working Group, which is now co-chaired by NIH Director, Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., and Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) Acting Director, Janine Austin Clayton, M.D., includes NIH Deputy Directors and Office of the Director (OD) senior staff, Institute and Center (IC) Directors, and other representatives of NIH intramural and extramural staff. Under the leadership of the new NIH Director, the members of the Working Group are continuing to work towards even greater accomplishments, acknowledging that this will be a long journey and recognizing that sustaining advancement of women in biomedical careers will require persistent attention.

The Working Group has sponsored national workshops focusing on mentoring women in biomedical careers and best practices for sustaining career success. The recommendations generated at these workshops have been incorporated into the recent activities of the Working Group. Other accomplishments include: amending the application for NIH conference grants to require that applicants describe plans to identify resources for child care and other types of family care at the conference site; extending the tenure-clock for intramural NIH scientists by one year to accommodate family leave; extending the allowed period of paid parental leave to eight weeks for both NIH intramural trainees and NIH funded-extramural trainees; helping to establish and continue to grow the Mid-Atlantic Higher Education Recruitment Consortium, which aids dual-career couples in finding positions near each other; carrying out and posting an analysis of the participation of women in the extramural grant process; and developing and funding a grant program entitled Research on Causal Factors and Interventions that Promote and Support the Careers of Women in Biomedical and Behavioral Science and Engineering.