A women's studies research project received a $1.4 million start-up grant to investigate the disparity between the number of men and women who hold senior positions in medical research in this country.Linda Pololi, a resident scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center, has just begun leading a team of investigators from Brandeis, Boston University and Johns Hopkins in interviewing a diverse range of faculty at five medical schools about their personal experience in academic medicine and the role of gender in their professional experience.

The project is aptly called "Gender, Culture and Advancement in Academic Medicine" and will be conducted over a five-year period. The grant, from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation of New York, funds the first two years of the project.

"There's a huge [gender] disparity if you look at the people who make decisions in medical schools," Pololi said. "In positions of leadership or authority, there are very, very few women."

Among the 175 medical schools in this country, the average school has 26 tenured female professors out of 197 total. About eight percent of department chairs are women and about 10 percent of deans are women, she said.

In 1980, 29 percent of medical students were women, and in 1990, 40 percent were women. Today, a little over half of medical students are female, Pololi said.

"So there's been this huge cohort of women who have gone through the system for a long time now," she said. "There have been plenty of women who are just as well trained and accomplished as the men."

The National Institute of Health and state governments pour billions of dollars into medical schools, much of which goes to training students, Pololi said.

"So if you don't use the potential of half your trainees, you've got a huge waste of funding, public money, apart from the huge waste of human capital," she said.

After the interviews, Pololi said they plan to conduct a national survey of faculty on their experiences in academic medicine, in partnership with the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Pololi said she hopes any medical school will be able to look at the findings and suggestions for improvement and apply them to their institutions.

"That's why we call it 'action research.' We're not only investigating the problems, but we're out to address the problems.

Pololi, an internal medicine physician by training, has been at the University working in the Women's Studies Research Center for two years.

"Being at Brandeis, I found myself in a very fortunate situation, working with an interdisciplinary group here and with the opportunity to look at medical schools from the outside.