{"id":40982,"date":"2014-01-08T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=40982"},"modified":"2014-01-09T10:21:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T15:21:29","slug":"women-in-cardiology-the-challenge-to-have-both-career-and-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/01\/08\/women-in-cardiology-the-challenge-to-have-both-career-and-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Cardiology: The Challenge to Have Both Career and Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monika Sanghavi\u2019s recent <\/em>Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes<\/a> article<\/a> tackles the important topic of the under-representation of women in cardiology and the reasons behind it, particularly the challenge of balancing a demanding career with family. CardioExchange asked Monika to share why she wrote the blog and the reaction she\u2019s received.<\/em><\/p>\n

The book Lean In<\/em> was released on March 11th 2013, the last day of ACC 2013.\u00a0 As part of the book promotion, Katie Couric had interviewed Sheryl Sandberg on her talk show and tweeted a statement from Sandberg: \u201cWomen should go for the big job and deal with family later.\u201d\u00a0 I immediately tweeted back, \u201cI agree women should strive for greatness, but at the expense of their family, not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

After I sent the tweet, I had an instant realization that I was being a hypocrite.\u00a0 I had been living apart from my husband for two years during fellowship in order to pursue my career ambitions.\u00a0 If that isn\u2019t deferring family obligations, what is?\u00a0 I considered that many would think that living apart from their spouse was too high of an opportunity cost to pursue a cardiology fellowship. I reflected on this and the other sacrifices we make in order to pursue our passion in medicine.<\/p>\n

While at the ACC sessions, I began to notice how most of the panelists of the late-breaking trials were men and how the conference was attended by more men than women.\u00a0 I also reflected on the fellows and faculty in my division and realized that women were disproportionately affected by family responsibilities: compared with our male counterparts, more of the female fellows had deferred starting a family and more of the female faculty had taken part-time positions to balance their family obligations.<\/p>\n

I began to wonder if this is why we have such an under-representation of women in cardiology and what could be done to level the playing field for women.\u00a0 It is obviously not the hard work, overnight call, or subject matter that deters women, or there wouldn\u2019t be so many in General Surgery, OBGyn, and Pediatric Cardiology.<\/p>\n

When I flew home that night I couldn\u2019t sleep; I wrote all of my thoughts on paper and began discussing this topic with other people.\u00a0\u00a0 My informal survey of the women faculty at my institution reflects the findings of the ACC Professional Life Survey.\u00a0 The struggles these women were facing were not isolated, but part of a national struggle.<\/p>\n

With the encouragement of my co-fellows and faculty mentors, I decided to publish my thoughts.\u00a0\u00a0 The response has been great.\u00a0 I received an e-mail from a resident applying to cardiology in which she said, \u201cYou have captured my fears exactly.\u201d I\u2019ve also gotten emails from more senior faculty of both genders who appreciate the discussion.\u00a0 I really hope this article helps others reflect on this important issue and is a catalyst for greater discussion on what can be done to help recruit women into the field of cardiology and to balance both their career goals and family responsibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monika Sanghavi shares why she’s tackling the important topic of the under-representation of women in cardiology and the reasons behind it, particularly the challenge of balancing a demanding career with family. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":496,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[698,381],"class_list":["post-40982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-women","tag-work-life-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/496"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}