UCSF

Objective

To further explore the issue of work parity between male and female urologists in the context of demographics, practice characteristics, subspecialty affiliation, and planned retirement.

Materials and methods

We analyzed data from the 2014 American Urological Association census, which is a specialty wide survey distributed to the entire urology community in the United States. A total of 2204 census samples were weighted to represent 11,703 urologists who practiced in the United States in 2014. We compared clinical and nonclinical hours worked by gender after adjusting for age, practice setting, fellowship type, and whether or not the urologist performed inpatient operations.

Results

Of the 11,703 practicing urologists in the United States, female urologists make up approximately 7.7% of the workforce (n ~ 897). Female practicing urologists were younger (66.4%, <45 years old), had shorter training intervals, and a younger planned retirement age than their male counterparts (63 years vs 68.5 years, P <.001). More women were fellowship-trained in a urologic subspecialty (54.9% vs 34.9%, P <.001) and more were in academic practices (33.2% vs 21.9%, P = .03). After adjusting for age, practice type, subspecialty, and inpatient operations performed, there was no difference in hours worked between women and men (beta-coefficient -2.8, 95% confidence interval -6.4 to 0.7, P = .12).

Conclusion

Gender does not appear to drive the number of hours urologists work per week. There is work hour parity between women and men practicing urologists in both clinical and nonclinical hours. Women are proportionately more likely to pursue fellowship training and hold academic positions.