Aparna Kamat: Thank you so much for having me here. This is really a great opportunity for me to discuss an initiative which I think is really relevant for women in medicine and today. And before we get going, I had a brief presentation that I wanted to share with y'all. So I just wanted to talk to you guys and introduce an initiative that we've launched. It's called Invoke Potential. And just by what the name sounds like, it is basically to help women in medicine invoke their potential to become leaders in the field. So as a gynecologic oncologist and a surgeon in a field that until recently was dominated by men, I've kind of seen that the path to leadership for women in medicine and surgery has evolved significantly for the better, but I still feel that there's a long way to go. So I'm always asked when I talk about this, why focus only on women? About three to four years ago, for the first time, women entering medical school outnumbered the male applicants. As you can see from this slide, there's what we call a leaky pipeline into academic leadership. And that's really still a reality today. In spite of there being more women entering medical school, we see that women who go through medical school as they matriculate or they graduate, the numbers are equal, similarly in residency and even in fellowship. But once women finish their training and start their years as young faculty, which kind of overlaps the same time when they would be getting married, having children, we see that the numbers decrease significantly, both for, in early faculty years, but also much more significantly as you go up the ladder to full professorship, division chiefs, head of departments and deans. So one of the questions is why is that?
Women have the ability, women have the ambition. So why is it that we see this inequality in the number of women that are in leadership roles? And so one of the reasons is because women themselves, they face very unique challenges in their career, challenges that are ... such as childcare, motherhood, things that actually help them alter their career choices. You see fewer women going into surgical fields, which are highly competitive. Once they go into surgical fields, a lot of women don't actually apply for certain leadership positions because of family constraints. And then some of them, even if they do apply, they're not given those positions or they lose those positions when they take maternity leaves, or because of gender biases that are pretty deeply rooted even today. So this is sort of the premise for why I felt like we needed to have some sort of an initiative to help women who want to climb that ladder actually get to where they want to go. So Invoke Potential was a global initiative, and we actually have ... The way we look at this problem is in a, let's say, a multi-pronged approach. So the first thing is programs such as these, interviews, having events where we actually raise awareness about if there is a problem that actually exists about gender disparities in medicine, and then helping women in medicine with skills that they can actually use to get to those leadership positions. So what are those skills? One of the things that we found that is very different among men and women is how they negotiate for positions, for contracts.
If there's a job that is open, men tend to apply for that position, even if they fulfill maybe a third of the criteria that the position entails. Whereas women, this is research that has been done, will not apply for that position unless they feel that they've checked all the boxes. So it helps to give women some of these skills to help negotiate, to have leadership presence, and also help them actually go and reach out for that opportunity, which they sometimes may be inhibited to apply for. But one of the biggest things that we, I feel is the backbone of anything that is, which will help women become leaders, is mentorship and sponsorship. This will help women identify role models, someone like Shilpa, who has become a leader in their field, that they can identify with and they can actually aim to be like and get guidance from. And finally, something called work-life equity. So it's really, really important for a woman to want to become a leader, to get to that position is what is really important is to actually define what their life goals are. And then once those life goals are defined, to actually navigate those life goals without giving up on things which are so important and in their professional life. And we believe that doing all these things right from the beginning, when women are actually joining medical school through their training and leadership, is something which will get them to where they want to be. So one of the things that I just wanted to end with is what Oprah Winfrey said. A mentor is someone who allows you to see the light within yourself. So to have and identify someone who believes in you, who can be your champion, and who can actually help guide you is something invaluable. And that is something that we want to foster and help with this program. Thank you.
Ashish Kamat: So Shilpa, what Aparna just presented really in many ways resonates with stuff that you heard when you were leading the session in Milan at the San Raffaele Institute. So share with us your thoughts a little bit.
Shilpa Gupta: Thank you, Aparna, for sharing your insights and taking charge of this important topic. I think it's not limited to any field in general, but women in healthcare face more challenges for sure. So in San Raffaele, we had a panel with several people, women in training and also faculty members there. And we were just discussing what challenges they face, and if there was one thing they would like to get. And Ashish, it was interesting that their insights were very different, or a lot of them had insights around the maternity leave, a simple thing like maternity leave, where they felt that they had to take that pretty generous maternity leave, but it was actually hurting their career. When they're away, they're losing the opportunities. And so they wanted something like, for example, their departments to support while they're not there, so that when they come back, they can still make use of those opportunities and not lose them. So I think different perspectives, European versus US, but we also heard that they would like some mentorship and sponsorship opportunities outside of their network locally. So I think that's where Aparna, what you discussed would fit, right? It's not really bound geographically, or you can do online workshops. And that's where, I think, Ashish, you mentioned that we could learn from this Invoke Potential and see how we can do something in our field.
Ashish Kamat: Yeah. So Aparna, where do you think this can go next? What are the next steps that you would recommend for the folks that are listening? Because first off, again, thank you to UroToday for giving us the opportunity. There's lots of people from all over the world who tune in to UroToday, people at all different phases, trainees and senior faculty. So just for a broad audience, some recommendations, some tips?
Aparna Kamat: Yeah. So I mean, I think one of the things that is really important is to actually identify the fact that there are resources out there that can actually help you navigate your career. I mean, like I said, there's so many skills that women, we go into medical school, we learn to be doctors, we learn to take care of patients and be surgeons, but no one really tells you how to navigate, how to deal with management, how to deal with your boss, or how to deal with your colleagues in a way that will help you actually get forward. So I think one of the things that we want to do with this program is help women especially get those skills, that's number one. Number two, help create a mentorship network. So one of the things we found very interesting was that when I was talking about this to people in the corporate world, we found that women in the corporate world face similar challenges to women in medicine. And with medicine becoming much, much more corporate, what we want to do is get some of the strategies from that field and apply it to help women in medicine navigate some of these challenges.
Ashish Kamat: So let me play a devil's advocate a little bit, because in medicine, all of us are not taught the skills when it comes to managing money, managing practices, and dealing with administration, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm only asking this because I wanted to shed light on this. What are some of the unique problems that women face as compared to their male counterparts? Just in brief, Aparna, first to you, and then Shilpa, you.
Aparna Kamat: Sure. So this was actually, I've kind of done a little bit of research on this. And one of the things when you're talking about what is so different about men and women. So one of the biggest differences is salaries. And one of them is that there's, even today, a huge salary gap for starting faculty for women and men. This was a study that came out in JAMA. And what they found was that even when you looked at specialty, you look at the amount of research that they do, how much money they bring in, essentially in spite of all that, women tend to, across the board, get paid a little bit less as compared to men. And one of the things that women don't do is actually negotiate. Men tend to be much better negotiators than women, and not negotiating a contract and thinking, "Well, I'll take what I'm given." When you look at across a career, that can actually amount to millions of dollars. So I think there are many skills that will help women. And it's not that men, they just tend to, they're just wired differently, and they tend to be a little bit more aggressive in asking for this as compared to women. So these are some of the things that I think are very different specifically to women.
Shilpa Gupta: Yeah, Aparna, I totally echo that. And from my personal experience, I learned this as a junior faculty that, when I was just happy to have a job and didn't negotiate anything, and while my counterparts ... There was a substantial salary difference. I mean, it's not even transparent, but when you ... [inaudible 00:13:38] I've done a leadership course with AAMC, where they tell us that you can actually go and ask, "What are the salaries of our counterparts in the department?" But when you try to do that, you never really get answers. And I've experienced this at my prior institution. So I think that there, they can teach us the skillset, but I think once you learn, that information needs to be disseminated, because people going to these courses are just like a dozen or two dozen. And I think that really is important, because it's eye-opening to hear the differences, like you said, and this JAMA study also showed that. So I would say, Ashish, that's very true. I think it's just a natural difference between women and men, and maybe women are negotiating more now. I don't know, but there still is, I think there's a lack of transparency in most institutions.
Ashish Kamat: Yeah, this is such an important topic. We could talk forever. In fact, the sessions that y'all held in Chile went down for an hour and a half, the one in San Raffaele went down for almost an hour. But here we'll wrap it up now. And in wrapping it up, first, I want to thank you for your time. And second, I want to give each one of you a closing statement, anything you want to share as a final statement with our audience. So here, Shilpa, you go first and Aparna, you go second.
Shilpa Gupta: Yeah, I think now women are more empowered with social media presence, and there's a lot of opportunities compared to maybe a decade ago. So they should make efforts to utilize all the resources. And I think UroToday could be such a platform where we outline all the resources available, no matter where geographically women are located, and so they can leverage that.
Aparna Kamat: And then for me, I mean, I think that one of the things that I've learned through this whole process is that I don't think leadership is a mystery. It's really a skill. And I think it's a skill that you can actually learn. I think it's a skill that can be practiced, and a skill that can be taught. So I think that women need to understand that it is not something that you're born with, but it is something that you can empower yourself with, and can get you to where you want to be. So I would just encourage people to go out there, find the resources, like Shilpa said, and make the most of it.
Ashish Kamat: Great. Great sentiments from both of you, and both of you are doing such great work. We'll put some links at the bottom of this obviously for our audience. I do want to, again, thank UroToday for giving us the opportunity. This is really forward-thinking on UroToday's part as well, and it partly goes out to the UroToday team, made up mainly of women, and the CEO and the leader, Gina, who's, again, a leader in our field. So thank you everybody and take care.
Aparna Kamat: Thanks.
Shilpa Gupta: Thank you, Ashish, for the opportunity, and thanks Aparna and UroToday.
Aparna Kamat: Thank you.