Uncompensated Work Drives Women Out of Academia: Bhavana Bhatnagar, DO

Physician workforce shortages have drawn nationwide attention, but one contributing factor is often overlooked: the disproportionate loss of women physicians in midcareer academic roles, said Bhavana Bhatnagar, DO, associate professor of medicine at West Virginia University Cancer Institute at Wheeling Hospital. This attrition reflects structural gaps in how institutions support women as their careers progress, she added.

Bhatnagar pointed to a recent JAMA Network Open qualitative study on midcareer female physician retention as a starting point for the conversation. Although women make up roughly 45% of medical school faculty, only 25% to 30% advance to department chair positions or remain long term in academic settings. She said the drop-off typically occurs 8 to 15 years into a career, often driven by a lack of professional fulfillment rather than a lack of ability.

A major factor, Bhatnagar explained, is uncompensated labor. Women faculty frequently take on mentorship, teaching, and committee responsibilities that consume significant time but go unrecognized in promotion decisions. Combined with caregiving demands, this can make sustaining an academic career increasingly difficult.

“It’s that sense of being overlooked and doing a lot of what I call ‘uncompensated work’ that I think drives people away from the academic career that they originally envisioned for themselves,” she said in a recent interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^®.

To improve retention, Bhatnagar recommended institutions build greater flexibility into work schedules and help women identify opportunities that are meaningful both to them and to the institution, backed by adequate time and resources. Just as important, she said, is simply naming the problem.

“I think some degree of flexibility and acknowledgement would go a long way,” she said.

Bhatnagar also cited disparities in visibility, noting that few women are selected for plenary sessions at major oncology conferences, not because of a qualification gap but because of unequal access to opportunity. Addressing that imbalance, she said, requires institutions to think more creatively about how they identify and elevate talent, rather than defaulting to established patterns that continue to leave capable women physicians behind.